Twisted Rights, Earnest Wrongs
by shipperofinsanity
Summary: [Sequel to About Rights and Wrongs] Blaine has healed. He's grown, he's gotten older, smarter, healthier, safer in himself. The world doesn't seem to want it that way, however - and it's fighting tooth and nail to destroy him and the people who love him, who don't understand, no matter how hard they try to, why he hurts so badly. [Klaine, eventual Brittana.]
1. Part 1

"Summer feels good, doesn't it?" Blaine laughed at Santana as she spun around in the middle of the sidewalk, her heels wobbling just a bit as her slight tipsiness made her stumble. He reached out and caught her as a precaution, and she laughed with him. The dying sun of the day caught in her hair and danced on her cheeks when she turned, and when she stopped and tumbled into him, he caught her again, her chin hooking over his shoulder for just a moment for he sputtered on her hair; she laughed that loud, free laugh of hers and pulled back.

"Summer doesn't feel as good as booze tastes!" she declared, and Blaine laughed again, because he hadn't had anything to drink at all and there she was, the bartender, drunk. Only slightly - not enough to really impair judgement too badly - but enough to make driving unsafe. Which he supposed wasn't too bad, considering there were cabs everywhere in New York.

People on the sidewalk gave them brief, judging glances, but Blaine didn't care. The sun was setting behind the buildings and the sky was lit with warm, deep colors, and shadows were heavier and everything was in stark contrast, and he loved it.

"Mm, Anderson," Santana said, getting his attention again. "What kind of drunk am I?"

"Right now?" he asked. "A 'slightly' drunk. Normally, you're a weepy drunk."

"I'm not weepy," she rebutted, but she was grinning.

Blaine was too happy to make himself think of reasons why she'd become so sad when her walls were forced down by alcohol. Instead he just smirked at her and said, "Not normally, no."

"Tell me a joke," she demanded suddenly, tugging on his arm. Alright, so maybe she was a bit more than slightly drunk.

"Sure," he replied easily. "What kind? A bad joke? A pun? An actually funny joke? An offensive joke? A dirty joke?"

"Dirty dirty dirty dirty dir-"

"Alright, dirty joke it is!" He arranged her so that the arm she was tugging on his with became intertwined with his, and he started walking again. Her shift had only ended half an hour ago, surely she wasn't as drunk as she was letting on. "There's a married couple sleeping in their bed one night. The husband wakes up and he's really…" Blaine hadn't actually told a dirty joke in forever. He blushed just saying it, "… horny, so he nudges his wife awake and asks if they can have sex."

"Pretty straight-forward," Santana remarked.

"Mm-hmm," he agreed. "She says she has a gynecologist appointment the next day and doesn't like to have sex the day before -"

"I wouldn't care."

"Believe me, I _know_," Blaine sighed, remembering the last time Santana invited a girl over to the apartment. He'd been kept awake all night and he'd never seen the girl again. Santana having a one-night stand had never surprised him in the slightest, but it hadn't been pleasant, not by any means. "So anyway, he says that's alright and turns over to go back to sleep."

"Respecting the wishes, yes!" Santana cheered, and then broke off in a giggle, her footsteps staggering so Blaine had to stop and steady her.

"Yes, consent is cool," he placated her. "But after a minute, he turns around and asks, 'You wouldn't happen to have a dentist's appointment tomorrow, would you?'"

Santana laughed, almost cackled, and her eyes closed and the corners crinkled, and her lips spread wide across her face, and she doubled over, her arm still in his so he was dragged down with her. He'd mind, normally, and he was sure that later he'd be tired of taking care of her - and regret it severely when she woke up with a hangover - but right then they were both happy and healthy and away from school. What could he honestly complain about?

"Anderson?"

And that's all it takes.

In a flash, Blaine had moved Santana behind him entirely, his one arm flung out entirely to keep her back and the other tucked over his torso, his legs apart and practically rooted to the ground. He wasn't sure how long it had been since he heard that voice, and it had only been a minute since he heard that word, but the reaction was as strong as he was sadly sure it would always be. Santana's giggles had been cut off and she was silent, but he could hear her breathing and feel it on the back of his neck.

In front of him was a person he hadn't seen in years. It hadn't been long enough. It never would be. He still wore baggy pants, and a baseball cap, and he still had scruff adorning his chin in patches. But this time he didn't have a bat held cocked and ready - and bloody - in his hand.

And Blaine still called him by his last name. And still with fear. "Harrison."

"Who is he?" Santana whispered in his ear. He pressed her further back, signalling for her to be silent.

"Why are you in New York?" Harrison asked.

Blaine didn't answer. The last time he'd asked him questions with no seeming violence behind them…

Harrison looked at him oddly. Those eyes were still as dark as Blaine remembered them, but they weren't quite as harsh. Maybe that scared him even more. He wasn't sure, but he stayed rigid and silent, and when Harrison got no answer, he sighed.

"Look, Anderson, I'm not gonna hit you now," Harrison told him. "I was a dick back in high school -"

"Hit him _now_?" Santana repeated incredulously. "You hit him before?"

"Santana, _please_."

There was something in his voice that made her stop.

Harrison's eyes flickered up to Santana and he seemed to notice her for the first time. The entire time he studied her appearance Blaine felt his stomach twist and convulse uncomfortably. Yes, he still had scruff, but it wasn't nearly as patchy as it had been. His baseball cap now looked clean and new. His pants were baggy, but at the appropriate height and held up by a belt. And his shirt was clean and washed and, though casual, definitely not slummy. His eyes weren't as hard. He wasn't the same person he had been…

But Blaine had the same response anyway.

"Who's this?" Harrison asked. "Your… friend..?"

"My best friend and roommate," Blaine deigned to answer. "Don't you _dare_ touch her."

Harrison froze at the accusation and his shoulders slumped a bit. "Anderson…"

"Go away."

"I know what I -"

"Go." Blaine's voice shook and he was reminded horribly of how it had shaken the same way back at the dance and how they'd teased him for it.

Harrison studied him for a bit longer. The last time Blaine had been under his gaze, he'd been lying down. On pavement. Bleeding. And Harrison had been standing just like that, his shoulders a bit to the side, his left leg carrying his weight, his bat discarded then, but his right hand still curled in a fist. But this time it wasn't an expression of dominance - it was an expression of uncertainty. Blaine was all the more frightened because of that. "I'm -"

Blaine's glare cut him off, and he took a deep breath before heading off in the direction they'd come from. Blaine watched him go, never once breaking eye contact, and Santana's chest rising and falling against his back stopped touching him when he pulled away after Harrison was out of sight.

Whatever Santana expected, it wasn't for Blaine to hold out his hand and, when she took it, keep walking. Quicker the second time, and she nearly had to jog to keep up, and his grasp was tighter than it could have been, and his face was lifeless as he stared ahead, his jaw set. "Blaine?" she called to him, but he ignored her.

Blaine knew he was overreacting. His brain was still trying to process it; Harrison's dad had always lived in New York, he knew. But he'd lived in Albany, not NYC. The entire school had been aware of that, considering he never shut up about his summer trips there. Did he still take summer trips?

Summer wasn't as amazing as he'd thought.

"Blaine, talk to me," she commanded, jerking his hand back so he stumbled, and she caught him this time. "Who was that?"

"An old… acquaintance." How else was he to phrase it? He didn't want to worry her, though he knew it was pointless.

"Blaine," she pressed, squeezing his hand. "Come on."

"Kurt…"

"Does he know?" Santana inquired, her tone softer, and he thought maybe the weepy drunk was beginning for some reason. "Who that was?"

"No," Blaine replied. "But I kind of… only… he doesn't know, no."

"Tell me."

"I don't want to."

Santana pulled her hand away and stared at him.

In her face was hurt. Of all the people he'd have told something to, she was second only to Kurt, and only in some prospects. And they both knew that and worked with it. Rachel and Santana were scheduled to switch roommates at the end of July, and it was only a week before father's day, but Kurt and Blaine knew they needed to take the precaution of seeing how they lived together before they officially started planning their wedding. Blaine was, frankly, scared of that, of living with Kurt, and not because he was scared of their first fight or first big loneliness escapade or anything. He was scared of not living with Santana. Kurt would always be the best person in his life, but Santana had quickly become his best friend, and Blaine doubted that would change.

Santana knew everything. Except the majority of his past. And while they'd never brought it up before this, him saying that he didn't want to tell her not only threw up a wall again that they'd only luckily broken down but offended both of them.

Santana might have been drunk, but she wasn't stupid. Blaine had rarely been more grateful for that.

"Tell me right now." There was no argument in her tone - it wasn't just a command, it was a force. She would make him talk, and if he didn't, she'd make it so he never spoke again. The power in her words was chilling. That wall needed breaking down again - so in her voice she swung a wrecking ball.

"He was just an old bully," Blaine confided. "He - I… there was a Sadie Hawkins dance at my old school. Before Dalton."

Santana nodded. There was nothing else in her face that indicated anything other than comprehension.

"I went with a boy."

She nodded again.

"The only other openly gay kid in school. In town, really. We went as friends."

She nodded and this time he noticed that she was tapping her foot - not out of impatience, but nervousness. It was a habit he wasn't sure she was aware of and hadn't pointed out yet.

"There were these jocks after the dance, when we were waiting for my date's dad to pick us up - they bit the living crap out of us."

Santana's fingers curled into a fist.

"He was kind of their leader - wait, no, _don't_ you go after him!"

Santana had turned and begun to stalk after the man who had already disappeared from view, but Blaine lurched forward and yanked her shoulder back so she spun around to face him. "He hurt you." Her voice was a monotone and yet still expressive than her face.

"Yes, and you can't hurt him in return," Blaine reprimanded her. "He's different now."

"You didn't treat him like he was," she pointed out, and this time something flashed in her eyes, something resembling contempt - or concern, he couldn't tell.

And she was right too. At least, partially right. Back then he'd have never told Harrison to do anything, let alone ordered him about - but his original reaction and the whimpers he'd been fighting down had been his real treatment, and it was no different than it had been. "I know."

Santana lifted her chin up a bit in defiance. "So why do I have to?"

"For just once, Santana," Blaine murmured, pulling her closer, "Be the bigger person. You'll regret it in the morning."

"Never stopped me before," he heard her mutter, but when he looked at her sadly in response she ignored him, her only reply being how her hand latched onto his again and she held her hand up to hail a cab. The sunset was much lower now, closer to night. The air was thinner, colder. But the town was just as alive as it had been, and Blaine felt like he wasn't, as opposed to how he felt earlier. He wondered if that mattered.

* * *

There are some things that you can forget about. You do something once and feel guilty for a while, but after some time passes it slips your mind and emotions and you just forget. Maybe sometime in the future someone brings it up and you apologize once you remember, but for the most part, it stops mattering.

There are some things that you don't forget but stop feeling guilty over. You always remember what you did and how guilty you felt when you did it, but the guilt goes away, even when the memories don't.

There are some things that you are constantly reminded of and never stop feeling guilty about. Every time you see a person, or an object, or even hear/see/smell something that could be connected in any vague and unremarkable way, you feel an overwhelming amount of guilt, like you did when you did it the first time, pour over you and drench you completely, and it's not gone for hours after you've left the presence of whatever made you flash back.

Kurt reading Blaine's journal did not fit into the first two categories mentioned.

Blaine almost never had it out. For the first two months after they got back to New York and started settling in, Kurt had had to cry himself to sleep a lot simply because the guilt was eating him alive. But he didn't dare bring it up for fear it would ruin things for Blaine (and himself) when they were just starting to look up.

After that, staying silent about it was easier. Blaine actually talked about it with Santana sometimes when Kurt was around, but it was only ever brief mentions. Kurt listened enough every time he heard it to see if Blaine had any inclination that he'd read it; he had a suspicion that Blaine knew, but Blaine never said anything about it.

When he came over on Sunday morning with his own coffee in one hand and Blaine's in the other, Blaine was writing in his journal what he'd forgotten to the night before. And he didn't try to hide it. Kurt was smiling when the door slid open after he knocked, and he said, "Hello, you owe me a coffee date," as soon as Blaine saw him.

"And why do I owe you a coffee date?" Blaine asked, raising his eyebrows in defiance. His eyes flickered to the coffee in Kurt's hands. Kurt took a sip of his and handed the other to him.

He went to grab it with his left hand, and Kurt immediately looked at his right, knowing it would have to be full for him to not use it, as it was his dominant hand - and he nearly choked on his sip of coffee because it was the journal.

"Kurt?" Blaine asked, not teasing that time, eyes on his face worriedly. "What is it?"

"Nothing," Kurt answered, a lot quicker than he should have, and brought his eyes back up to meet Blaine's.

"Is it the journal?" Blaine asked outright.

"I - Well, I -" Kurt's jaw dropped a bit, and his mind stopped functioning for a moment, because to him that journal was still everything Blaine hated about himself, and Blaine was just carrying it around as if it didn't matter. "I guess?"

"Hm."

That was all Blaine said on the matter right then, and then he smiled and stepped aside and beckoned - with his right hand and journal - for Kurt to come in. It only took Kurt a moment to decide to, and he schooled his features into a returning smile and went inside, closing and locking the door behind him with his foot and hearing the click.

"I forgot to do it last night, so I'm just catching up," Blaine explained further, before sitting down and beginning to put the journal aside. "I -"

"Wait!" Kurt cried out, without thinking about it, his hand reaching out on instinct to grab the book before it closed on the not-dry ink.

Blaine snatched it back and raised his eyebrows again. This time it was a challenge and Kurt could feel how red his face was, but he was terrified at looking in his reflection in the window because that would mean breaking eye contact and Blaine's eyes were - were they accusing?

"I read it," Kurt blurted out. He waited for Blaine to respond, but he didn't; not even with a shrug, or a shout, or anything. He didn't even become rigid. He didn't even blink. "I mean, it was months ago. It was when you and Santana got into your first fight as roommates, and she read it, and then gave it to me to read. And I read it. But I never got to finish it and -"

"Kurt?"

"Yes?"

"Relax and keep your voice down, Santana's still sleeping." And then the eyebrows dropped and he smirked at Kurt warmly. "And I knew you'd read it. It was really obvious."

"So you're not mad?" Was it possible for that much pent-up guilt to turn into relief so quickly?

Blaine's smirk slipped a bit. "I was pretty mad at first. And then I was only mad that you wouldn't tell me. But I figured if anybody had a right to keep secrets in our relationship, it was you -"

"Wait, what?" Kurt broke across. "Keep secrets? Why do I have a right? Why don't you?" Confusion swept across his returning guilt from Blaine's declaration of feeling. "It's your journal."

"Well, yes, but it's filled with my mistakes, and _my_ secrets," Blaine explained, somewhat stiff and definitely unsure. "And if you read it you obviously know that I've kept some… some big ones, and so I figure that if you want to keep secrets -"

"Okay, no, I'm going to stop you right there," Kurt held up a hand and Blaine's voice cut off. "Yes, you kept secrets. That's what everyone does. The fact that you kept your self-harm a secret isn't really surprising, don't most people? That doesn't entitle me to keeping secrets, and it certainly doesn't entitle me to keep secrets that involve knowing yours."

"I don't know what most people do about self-harm," Blaine said, and that time he spoke his words were clipped, and Kurt really looked at how his face was shutting down and listened to how his tone was losing animation. "You're allowed to -"

"Don't let me do things you wouldn't do," Kurt interrupted him again.

"You mean like let me _talk_?"

Kurt reeled back at the vehemence that flashed outward from his boyfriend, but it had vanished into meekness and discomfort by the time he blinked twice. Blaine stared down at his hands, and then took his thumb, which was holding his place in the page, out of the journal and let it fall shut. His hand holding his coffee shook just the slightest bit - Kurt could hear the coffee sloshing inside the cup - and then Blaine mumbled something like "Sorry" and Kurt sighed.

"Sorry," Kurt repeated him, though he said the word louder, and then sat down next to Blaine, the couch cushion bending to his weight, and he turned just so that his knees bumped his boyfriend's. At the contact, Blaine looked up, and Kurt smiled as kindly as he could. "Okay?"

Blaine didn't smile at first. Blaine didn't seem to be able to decide whether to look at the journal or at Kurt, and when he decided on Kurt he didn't seem to be able to decide whether his chest or his eyes were more appealing. He decided on his chest, apparently, because when he dropped the journal entirely and sighed, the sigh led to another small smile, and Blaine bent forward so that his forehead rested on Kurt's collarbones.

From there, Kurt plucked the coffee back out of his hands and placed both cups on the end table beside the couch they were on - only to find that when he returned to Blaine, the boy nearly pounced on him, his hands clutching his shirt and drawing him closer so his lips found Kurt's neck - in the area right below his earlobe.

Kurt moaned without meaning to when Blaine kissed there and his hands went straight to his shoulders. It was a routine and they'd perfected it, and though Kurt could feel the adrenaline Blaine's lips always brought pooling thickly in his stomach, he knew what Blaine was doing. He was changing the subject and he was doing it because he didn't want to talk.

Kurt knew that communication really was the root to the majority of their problems - but it was getting rather hard to think.

"So," Blaine murmured, his breath hot on Kurt's neck, "tell me again -" he kissed Kurt's neck, lower this time, just a bit "- why I owe you -" and he kissed lower once more, a trail forming, zig-zagged and lingering "- a coffee date?"

Kurt leaned back on the couch and only stopped when his head reached the arm of the sofa. Blaine went with him, shifting so he crawled on his hands and knees above Kurt, his calves pressing against Kurt's thighs so they were held together tightly, his arms on Kurt's chest so his fingers could slide the first button on his shirt undone. He took his time with it, brushing his skin as often as he could, and each place of contact shot a jolt through Kurt that joined with the others and sank to his back, tightening it so it arched.

"You -" Kurt gasped when Blaine kissed his neck once more and caught his skin between his teeth - but he didn't bite it, and instead Kurt could feel even more of that hot breath pushing and pulling at it, sucking. "Oh, you - I went to get… Nh, I went to get coffee for you, and…"

It was then that Blaine decided to put his weight on Kurt. His arms slid off of Kurt's chest so his own chest could take their place, and his hips rested on Kurt's, his legs flattening out and widening so Kurt could spread his comfortably. His body was thrumming with the same energy Kurt's was, and his heart was beating as fast as Kurt's, and his breath caught when Kurt's did after Kurt rolled his hips, giving up on arching his back.

"And?" Blaine prompted, his voice strained, and Kurt opened his eyes - when had he closed them? - to see that Blaine's pupils were wide and the gold in his eyes was thicker and darker than they normally were; Kurt fought down the stirring behind his zipper as best he could at the gravelly voice Blaine used.

"I don't know anymore," Kurt whispered, and he didn't. Blaine's nose came to his and nuzzled it gently, and his lips kissed the corner of his mouth teasingly - and then the other corner. And then up his jaw. And the whole time Kurt could feel the heat of his exhaled breath and the coldness when he inhaled sending temperature fluctuations onto him; they traveled in patches and still somehow in waves, and each new wave made it that much harder to keep his pants down.

"Mm," Blaine responded with just that syllable, and it drove Kurt crazy because half of it was a moan and the other half was cocky, and his eyes were closed now because he was kissing Kurt all over, and Kurt closed his eyes in response just to feel more of the kisses. "Well then, I guess…" his teeth narrowly nipped at his skin before his lips met it again, and Kurt's heart lurched at the snapping sound. "… I'll do this instead."

Blaine took his turn to roll his hips, and when he pressed his waist into Kurt's like that it was impossible not to feel just how stretched their jeans were rubbing against each other.

"_Oh_," Kurt let out without even stopping to think of how low his voice is when he said it. "Yes, I - _yes_."

"You know," Blaine grinned into a slower kiss, "It really is fun to see you let loose like this."

"Mm," Kurt groaned softly behind his teeth, which were gritted together, and Blaine started sucking again, harder this time, and his tongue flicked Kurt's skin and Kurt's hips shook with the effort of just not moving. Blaine's dick was straining as hard as Kurt's to break free of the confines of their pants, and Kurt could feel the heat and the _friction _when Blaine started gyrating his hips up and down on Kurt's waist. "Kiss me and I'll be even looser."

"I am kissing you," Blaine taunted, and then his nose brushed yet another trail across the top of his cheekbone so he could kiss the tip of Kurt's nose. His hips were slow and steady on Kurt, and though Kurt wanted few things more than to simply tell him to go faster, Blaine was the one taunting him, and that was new - and he loved it, but he sure as hell wasn't going down without a fight.

"My _lips_," Kurt commanded, and opened his eyes to see Blaine's reaction to the demand. And it was a demand, there was no question about it; Blaine's eyes flew open to see the man that husky, deep voice came out of, and he looked startled - but only for one pleasing moment, and then his cocky little smirk was back.

"Getting feisty, are we?" Blaine commented breathily and completely on purpose. His hips rocked even slower into Kurt's, and it was almost making him flush had his blood not been somewhere else - and in retaliation, Kurt thrust his hips upward so they rammed into Blaine's, and their dicks were shoved together and Kurt felt the proximity.

Blaine's hips stuttered then and he gasped that time; Kurt's hand slid down his arm from his shoulder to his elbow teasingly, his fingers making small circles as they went down, and he kissed Blaine's closed eyelid. Blaine groaned then, louder than Kurt had been groaning, and dropped his head down so his lips met Kurt's.

The kiss was slow and lazy and hotter than Kurt thought it would be, and Blaine's tongue traced the inside of his cheek, and his face was up against his, overheated and all too human, flesh on flesh, skin on skin, and Kurt thrust again, this time without meaning to.

"Mm, Kurt," Blaine moaned, taking his tongue back but never removing his lips from Kurt's, "I - I think we should cool down -"

"Yeah," Kurt sucked in as much air as he could, but his lungs still felt empty, and he let it all out and then gasped in some more. Blaine's breath was just as accelerated as his, and still covering Kurt's cheek every few seconds when his nose caressed Kurt's when he inhaled. "I - _oh_, damn, I…" And then he felt Blaine's tongue come back, and Blaine's hips speed up, and suddenly the friction was almost painful.

"I'm…" Blaine didn't finish speaking, and that time it wasn't because Kurt cut him off.

"Me too," Kurt agreed, his lungs still empty, and he bit Blaine's bottom lip and began sucking, and was rewarded when Blaine's voice stuttered just when his hips did, and Blaine shook and convulsed his muscles tightly from his dick to his head to his toes.

And Kurt followed suit just seconds after. It shoved through him and he trembled and let Blaine hold him like he'd held Blaine, and then the moment passed and Blaine kissed him again. It was slow and lazy, like before, but it was more of a parting gift than it had been prior; Kurt wasn't sure if he was scared of that or not, so he just opened his eyes, met Blaine's, and said, "Hi."

"Hi," Blaine said, and then grinned. "I think that that was as messy as it was the first time we did it."

"Don't remind me," Kurt groaned in an entirely different fashion. "Let's just be glad that this time we didn't break my desk chair."

"Do you two mind?" Santana snarled, stumbling into the living room and holding her head awkwardly with the heel of her hand. She glared at the two of them past her horrible morning hair, and then gnashed her teeth and said, "I've got a hangover and I'm not in the mood to deal with puking, so stop being so in love and post-orgasm and go clean yourselves up before I barf on you."

* * *

Blaine didn't so much agree to meet Adam as not say anything opposing the idea.

To be completely fair, Kurt really could have read the signs better. Taking only classes that were as far away from what Kurt remembered of Adam's schedule was a pain in the ass, but Blaine went through it; steering clear of any extracurricular activities that mentioned either the name Adam or Crawford was a pain in the ass, too, but he did that; and though he knew in the months that had followed those three weeks of Kurt and Adam not speaking they'd become better friends than they had ever been boyfriends, and they texted, and they talked in the hallways, and they hung out sometimes with the girls, Blaine made sure he always had an excuse.

Honestly, it wasn't even that he didn't want to see "Kurt's Ex-Boyfriend". He didn't mind that they'd dated in the slightest. What he minded what the fact that Adam Crawford had been the name of his Sadie Hawkins date, and that his father had leaved in England. Blaine forgot where in England, but it started with an S. And he was sure it was just a coincidence, but if the name itself brought on nightmares at night whenever he knew Kurt was out with him, what would meeting the person do?

But he didn't have an excuse for that Thursday. He'd told Kurt just the day before that he'd gotten all the assignments due anywhere recently done, in case they wanted to do anything special, and Santana was recovered from her hangover from the day before, and Rachel didn't have an audition for the next three days - so he really should have expected something like Kurt suggesting he finally meet Adam.

"I don't know, Kurt," Blaine said, shrugging as nonchalantly as he could. "Wouldn't it throw off the group dynamic you guys have built up or something?" His hands, scrubbing the plate he was holding, scrubbed harder and faster, and he didn't notice.

"That's ridiculous," Kurt chastised him happily, not catching on, like always. "The only person there who isn't already your friend is Adam, and he's the one you're coming to meet, especially if Santana and Rachel will come."

"I have homework," Blaine tried next, setting the plate down on the towel to dry and picking up the next one, silently cursing their dishwasher for breaking and their lack of available funds for not being able to fix that.

"You said yesterday you finished it all," Kurt pointed out, his smile still not deterred.

"Oh, right," Blaine said, putting only half his normal enthusiasm into the words. "I forgot."

"So I can schedule it?" Kurt asked, and normally Blaine loved how adorable he was when he was excited, but this time he was weary of it; Kurt wasn't as unobservant as that, was he?

"Sure," Blaine said, instead of saying what he thought.

And boy, did he regret that.

Kurt tugged on his arm from the hand he was holding and turned and smiled at him. "Come on, Blaine," he said, pointing to the theatre. "We'll be late. Why are you walking so slowly?"

"It's possible that Gel-Head isn't comfortable meeting your ex-boyfriend, Lady Hummel," Santana remarked casually, walking past them with Rachel on her arm, who looked at Blaine pityingly as they passed.

"Is that it?" Kurt asked, his brow furrowing as if he'd only just then thought of it.

"No, it's not -" Blaine tried to explain, but as soon as he denied what Santana suggested, Kurt said, "Good!" And turned back around, and pulled him through the door.

"Hey Adam," Rachel greeted by calling out to the man with his back to the door looking at concession prices. His hair was sandy blonde and he was taller than them by a considerable margin and Blaine remembered that he was twenty-two and was struck again by that pang of anxiety that occurred whenever he thought of the similarities. "This is Blaine. Blaine, this -"

Adam turned around.

Blaine couldn't help the gasp that passed his lips, and Adam didn't seem capable of stopping it either. Rachel stopped talking when it happened, and looked between them curiously; Santana, on the other hand, had dropped her eyebrows and her smirk and stared intently at Blaine, studying his facial expression and body language; how his eyes were wide and his lips were parted and the paleness that overtook him; how his fingers were curled into fists tightly and how his back was straighter than normal. Though it was entirely different from his almost feral stance that night coming home from the bar, it reminded her of that encounter, and she, too, froze in place. Kurt looked between them like Rachel, but with more concern.

Adam was almost a mirror image of Blaine's reaction, until he spoke. "You… I thought it was a coincidence."

"Me too." Blaine found his tongue as loose as the thoughts streaming around his head, though the rest of him was tight and stressed. "I never…"

"What's going on?" Kurt asked.

"I thought your dad took you back to England?" Blaine asked, still speaking through gritted teeth to Adam.

"Blaine?" Kurt asked again, more emphasis this time.

"He did," Adam answered. "He - I got into NYADA with a video audition and we had the money, so -"

"_Blaine_!" Kurt exclaimed, tugging his arm once more. "Explanation, please?" he added, when Blaine turned to him as if hearing him for the first time.

Blaine looked at him and how clueless he looked, and then back at Adam, who was in the process of collecting himself. When he turned back to Kurt, he cleared his throat and flexed his fingers, relaxing his pose, shaking his head to bring the color back, he said, "Do you remember when I told you about Sadie Hawkins?"

"With Tina?" Kurt attempted to clarify.

"No, Kurt," Blaine sighed patiently. "The one before."

"Yes. What about it?"

Blaine glanced at Adam again. "He was my date."

* * *

As it turned out, the group dynamic wasn't so much destroyed as it was exclusionary. Mostly because after it had been explained to the rest of the group, Adam had pulled Blaine outside to talk, and the other three were left inside to wonder what about.

"It seems too coincidental to be real," Kurt muttered, staring at the huge container of popcorn in his arms. "Adam never told me he went to school in Ohio."

"He only went for a year, Kurt, and it didn't exactly work out well," Rachel reminded him, fiddling with her bottled water.

"Still," Kurt insisted, looking up at her. "You'd think he'd have thought to tell me he went to school in Ohio for a year when his parents divorced and his mother moved there."

"Do you blame him? He got beaten to a pulp and pulled back out of the country, and you're constantly throwing around the name of someone who got beat with him." Santana cocked her head to the side, daring him to defy her. "It's not exactly the type of thing he'd be encouraged to talk about."

"I do blame him," Kurt mumbled.

"Like you've never kept secrets before about something painful," Rachel scolded.

"I don't!" Kurt defended angrily.

"How did your mom die?" Santana inquired, feigning innocence, her head only pulling further to the side.

"Shut up," Kurt snapped.

"You're only proving us right," Rachel told him.

"Fine," Kurt snarled, "So I won't blame him. But Blaine could have -"

"Could have what?" Santana demanded, her head pulling back upright and her eyes getting harder as they glared at him, her voice whipping his eyes wide. "Don't you _dare_ go blaming Blaine for this. At least he told you an idea of what happened. The same reasons apply to him. Don't you dare," she pointed a finger when Kurt opened his mouth to speak. "Do not even _dare_ pinning this on Blaine."

"Is that why he always had an excuse to stay home when we went out with Adam?" Rachel wondered aloud, though her eyes were drinking in Santana's face and all it displayed.

"He'd have nightmares sometimes," Kurt said, and if he hadn't said it with such an air of realization it would have been muttered. "On days when I'd talk about Adam or hang out with him. At least, when I was with him. Now that I remember. Santana, what about -"

"Now that you mention it, Lady Hummel, you're right," Santana didn't look at him when she spoke that time. "Every time we'd all go out together he'd wake me up in the middle of the night with his stupid -"

"Don't call it stupid," Kurt stopped her, and she raised her hand and flipped him off. He snorted. "Right. Nice. Calm yourself, Satan."

"Would you two knock it off?" Rachel griped. "This isn't about you guys or how you see it, so stop getting angry when someone doesn't share your views on it. This is about Adam and Blaine and you're both being mean. What if they'd been each others' triggers?"

"Triggers?" Kurt asked.

"If I were to say the words 'heart attack', what's the first thing you think of?"

"My dad."

"A trigger is like that, a bit," Rachel explained. "It's when you hear or see or smell or touch something that reminds you of a certain thing, except for a trigger, it basically reverts your mind to the precise moment when your trigger became your trigger, and your body goes back to the chemical state it was in then. So a retired soldier's trigger could be a gunshot or seeing blood, and when that happens, he kind of has a panic attack."

"Blaine doesn't have panic attacks," Santana and Kurt said at the same time, and then looked at each other evenly.

"Okay then," Rachel said, "That doesn't mean he can't have a trigger. What if something reminded him of when he cheated on you?"

Kurt flinched. "I don't know. Maybe he'd cry? We haven't really… talked about _when_ it… happened."

"His body would go back to the chemical state it was in then," Rachel kept going. "He'd be right back in that moment when the guilt first hit him."

"So he'd still feel like he'd just cheated?" Santana clarified.

"In other words, he'd feel like 'once a cheater, always a cheater'," Kurt repeated her.

"Yup," Rachel nodded. "That's what it is. We don't know if it's Blaine's, but it could be that."

* * *

"… feel like 'once a cheater, always a cheater'."

"Blaine?" Adam asked, laying his hand on Blaine's arm, his voice covering Rachel's distant one through the door. "What is it?"

"I…" Blaine's hand, holding the door open only a tiny bit, had frozen with the rest of him when he heard that.

How was he supposed to react? He'd thought he and Kurt had moved past that. Did Kurt really think that?

But Kurt was talking to Rachel and Santana. If he didn't think that, he wouldn't have said it. Not to them; at least, not both of them, and not after this happened. What had prompted it? Was it his keeping secret about this? This happening in general? Santana was saying something else through the door, but Adam was asking him what was wrong.

"Nothing," Blaine answered.

_Everything. My boyfriend doesn't trust me. I've not given him a reason to trust me. I broke his trust and his heart and he's only pretending to have moved on from it. I'm stringing him along. He hasn't forgiven me. He can't possibly love me like this. And Santana and Rachel are agreeing with him, aren't they? Of course they are. They were his friends first. And I ran into two people from my past just in the last three days in public areas, and both times I wasn't able to protect myself or the people with me from being hurt in the process, even if it was just emotionally. Oh, god, I want to -_

"I just can't believe this is actually happening," he finished, turning and smiling a small smile at Adam.

Adam smiled back reassuringly. "It's alright. At least it was me, right? Instead of one of them?"

_But I ran into one of them, too, and I don't remember how I dealt with it back then aside from -_

"Yeah," he finished. "At least it was you."

He pushed open the door and walked in. He didn't say anything - not even when Kurt slid his hand out of Blaine's when he took it, and the conversation stopped abruptly, and they all stared, and…

He needed an ice cube. He hadn't needed an ice cube for months, almost a year. He was getting better. What was happening?


	2. Part 2

It was a day afterward that Kurt mentioned how he spent Father's Day every year. They were all sitting around the kitchen table at the Hummelberry apartment eating something Rachel had cooked for dinner (none of them could identify it and they were all too awkward about it to ask - Blaine elbowed Santana and shook his head every time she started to, knowing it would upset the brunette) that wasn't altogether too bad, when Rachel said pleasantly, "So, what are you all doing for your fathers for Father's Day?"

They all looked at Blaine, Rachel with sudden realization that he couldn't really do anything, the other two with concern for how he'd react. Blaine just smiled and shrugged. "I don't know. I guess I'll help Kurt get a present for Burt. He's the best dad I've got."

"Oh, I don't get my dad a present for Father's Day," Kurt explained immediately, and the focus was - thankfully - averted to him. "My dad always said the best thing I could get him was something we could do together that was what we'd do normally if we had the chance. Like go out to dinner, or maybe to a movie. Whenever I asked why, he always said that it meant I didn't love him any more than normally, which meant I always loved him as much as I could - and I do, so I never argued."

"Aw, that's sweet," Santana drawled, but Blaine's head was already racing. "I give my dad another tie for his collection every year. Sometimes my mom wears them on their anniversary. Context up to you all -"

"Really, Santana," Rachel scrunched up her nose. "I get both of my dads old classic musicals. I'm going to have a difficult time this year, I think we already own most of them, but I was thinking I could start accepting modern ones. My first choices were Wicked and Rent, what do you guys think?"

"Both fantastic musicals," Kurt said.

"Have you guys ever thought about how much like Rent we are?" Santana remarked then, slightly more serious than before. "I mean, we've got the snarky lesbian -" she gestured to herself, "the cute little film nerd who apparently never has time to hang out because he's constantly visiting Ohio -"

"Artie's just busy is all -" Rachel tried to say.

"- and then we've got a gay male counter-tenor," Santana went on, pointing at Kurt, "and a drama queen." She pointed at Rachel on the last line, who bit her lip to avoid smiling.

"Who's Mimi?" Kurt said, fighting giggles.

Rachel wasn't too good at holding it back. "I nominate Blaine."

"Now, hold on a minute!" Blaine exclaimed, leaning forward and putting his arms on the table, but they were already all shrieking with laughter. Santana had thrown her head back and her rougher voice was almost as musical as it was when she sang; Rachel's hands were flitting around her face when she moved even the slightest bit; and the corners of Kurt's eyes were crinkling and he was bent at the torso, his midsection convulsing with mirth, that dimply smile spread wide across his face.

And so it was that late that night that Blaine was online buying pane tickets, just to see that smile again - because he hadn't seen it in weeks, and he _had_ to make Kurt trust him again.

* * *

It was Santana that ruined the surprise.

The next morning, she asked to use him computer to do the bookkeeping. Blaine didn't think anything of it; she asked him that once a month, because she'd broken her computer maybe two months after moving to New York when she'd still been cramped in with Rachel and Kurt, and she was much better with money than he was. He gave it to her without thinking and went to make eggs for breakfast.

"Why do you have internet history that says you bought four tickets to the Dayton airport?"

"Oh, sh- I didn't - I mean…" Blaine dropped the whisk into the eggs and whirled around. "I thought… Kurt's always with Burt on Father's Day, and Artie said he's going anyway and already has his ticket, and I thought Rachel could deliver her musicals in person, and you could just get your dad a tie -"

"The tie thing was a joke," Santana interrupted him dryly. "I get my dad snow globes, actually. He's got a thing for them. That and old records." She raised her eyebrows when she saw Blaine's form still hadn't relaxed. "Chill, B. It's fine, we've got the money for it. I was just curious."

"Oh - okay," he said, waiting for the catch. When none came and she went back to typing, he grabbed the whisk again before hesitating and continuing to say, "You're really alright with it? I spent a lot of money without asking you -"

"If you want me to yell at you I will," she rolled her eyes, "But I was just going to let you try and make Kurt kiss you again."

"We kiss all the time -"

"I _know_, god," she groaned, "Don't remind me."

And in that short conversation, Blaine entirely forgot to tell her to keep it a secret so he could surprise Kurt, which had been his intent, and so when Kurt and Rachel showed up for their typical Tuesday dinner, the first thing Santana said after she and Blaine set the hamburgers (and one veggie burger) down on the table was, "It'll be nice to be back at Breadstix, where we can just get an unlimited supply of those greasy, delicious sticks, and don't have to cook for a few days."

"When are you going to be in Breadstix?" Rachel asked, dropping her fork in surprise the same time Kurt paused and stared at her in confusion.

"We all will be," Santana said, and Blaine hissed her name and she turned to him. "What? They've got to know so they can pack -"

"Why are we going to Breadstix, Blaine?" Kurt said slowly, and Blaine's heart stopped beating because he only sounded suspicious, not pleased, and he wanted to please him, after what he said, 'once a cheater, always a cheater', _he needs more, Blaine, more -_

"He got us plane tickets," Santana said in response when Blaine didn't speak. "We're all going to Lima for Father's Day so you can spend the day with your Dad and Berry can be all musical-theatre-y and I can bombard my dad with stupid tiny globes of snow."

"I thought you said ties -"

"It was a joke."

"Did you really, Blaine?" Kurt asked, a smile back, but not _the_ smile, and Blaine felt a pang of guilt at when that smile had stopped coming for him. But he smiled back at Kurt, and nodded. And when Kurt stood up and his chair scraped across the floor and he kissed Blaine's cheek chastely and quickly, it was soft and tender and Blaine flushed to the tips of his ears._  
_

* * *

The next two days with much elation on the Ohio side when they revealed their travel plans. They were due to board their plane the next day, in under twenty-four hours, and they were just finishing up packing. Blaine was sitting on his bed while Santana went through his clothes to make sure he hadn't packed anything that would embarrass her when she was inevitably seen with him when his phone rang.

He answered without looking at it. "Hello?"

"Blaine."

The phone slipped through his fingers into the bedspread, but he fumbled it back to his ear as quickly as he could. "Da- Nicholas."

Santana looked at him curiously and froze when she saw his face. She dropped the shirt she'd been picking at and turned toward him fully, reaching out a hand for him to take without even speaking. He took it. It was as warm and firm as always, and she smiled supportingly the same time his father - no, Nicholas - said, "I've been informed that you're coming to Ohio for Father's Day."

"I am," he confirmed. "Who told you?"

"If you'd believe me, Burt Hummel," his father - Nicholas, damn it - said. "He walked into the building today to be his buddy's back-up for a relationship problem. It got sorted out, but there was a big scene, and he mentioned that his son was coming back from New York with his four friends. I assumed you were one of them."

"I am," Blaine said again, not elaborating this time, already tasting the stiffness on his tongue.

"Now, Blaine, we discussed this -"

"I'm not coming down for you," Blaine cut across him. "I'm coming down for Burt. For _my Dad_."

Nicholas's sharp intake of breath wasn't missed, but Blaine didn't feel guilty. He'd been the one to insist on not being "related" to Blaine - it wasn't Blaine's fault he had an actual family now and could say things like that. "That was uncalled for -"

"What should be uncalled for is this call," Blaine snapped. "You shouldn't have even dialed."

"Blaine -"

"Hang up."

"If you'd stop being gay this wouldn't be a problem!"

"Problem?" Blaine hissed. "I don't have a problem. You seem to, though. Maybe you should go talk it out with your family instead of taking it out on a stranger."

"I just wanted to make it clear that you don't owe me a visit -"

"For Father's Day?" Blaine scoffed. "Is that what this call was meant to accomplish? Look, don't worry about me coming to you for family-related holidays. I wouldn't dream of going anywhere near you on days I could be appreciating those who actually love me and aren't even _supposed_ to."

Santana's and wriggled a bit in his grasp, and when he looked back at her, he realized he was gripping her hand with so much force it was hurting her. Loosening his grip so she smiled gratefully, he listened to his father - no, damn it, Nicholas - try to refute him. "We tried, Blaine! We tried for as long as we could! You're the one who ruined this! You are a horrible, unappreciative, stubborn child who needs to stop sticking his dick up every guy he sees and start realizing that that is gross and wrong and -"

"Do not even begin the process of presuming that you are more aware of what I am than I am. I know my interior." Blaine nearly spit the words and they came out a low, threatening monotone. "I may not like it much, but I know it. And it's mine, so I'll decide what to do with it, and thank you kindly to stop telling me otherwise."

"You -"

"You have no right to even be making this call," Blaine went on, fury beginning to fall off the tower it had built up. "You're not my family, so why worry? Worried that I might show up and contaminate the house with my gayness? Have you even bothered cleaning out my room? Or have you been too scared to touch all the awards people handed me over the years? Could you not be bothered to realized that who _I_ love shouldn't matter when it comes to how much _you_ can love me? Or were you busy with Cooper, maybe, and were reminded of the failure you disowned and the fact that you're hiding it from him?"

"That is completely out of line -!"

"GROW _UP_!" Blaine screamed. "GROW UP AND FOR ONCE, STOP JUMPING IN AND OUT OF MY LIFE! _MAKE UP YOUR MIND_! DO YOU WANT TO BE IN IT, OR NOT?!"

For a moment, Blaine let it slip. And for much longer than a moment, he cared about the answer, and about how Santana was staring at him in morbid, terrified fascination.

"No."

There was a click and a dial tone, and Blaine pulled the phone away from his ear, and almost wished it was back up there so he could hide behind the meaningless noise and the silence wouldn't be so compressing.

Santana's eyes were always dark, but the way she was looking at him, her face half cast in shadow and her hair falling about her cheeks, made her look positively disgusted, though he knew that her features were anything but, and it was really just his perception that was warped. She stared at him, and waited for him to explain, or to speak, but he didn't; instead, he retracted his hand, and when his fingers weren't linked with hers she reached out for him again and said, "Blaine -"

Not B, or Gel-Head, or any of the nicknames she called him so affectionately. She had to choose the one label his parents had given him that wasn't meant to be offensive and that hurt the most when they used it. And he knew she was thinking about how his side of the conversation was so sharp and jaded, and how what muffled, incomprehensible murmurs she heard were softer and steadier through the phone, and he snapped, "Haven't you ever seen Scooby Doo? The monsters are always humans and the good guys are always the pretty ones."

Her hand fell limp onto his lap when he placed his own on the bed. His knuckles twisted on the sheets.

"B," she tried again, and Blaine glanced at her guiltily at the hurt in her voice, despite how juvenile his comment had been.

"Sorry," he said through gritted teeth. "Just - go to bed. I'll see you in the morning."

And with that, he turned around and put his back to her and his head on the pillow, and closed his eyes with finality. She whispered his first initial one more time, the quietest he'd ever heard it, before she finally got to her feet and walked quickly to her own room.

Blaine hated himself more with each step she took and wondered how many walls he'd just thrown up between them again.

* * *

Santana considered calling Kurt. She considered calling Burt. Maybe even Cooper. She even considered _Sam_. And then she considered Blaine - but not as someone to call. She considered how angrily he'd shouted into the phone, and she thought over whether it was a good thing or a bad one; the same could be pondered over his questions and comments and the fact that he didn't end the phone call. She wondered if he got any closure from what had just happened or if the whole thing seemed more open and unamended than before.

He hadn't moved in his bed. She'd been listening for him to move, waiting for the rustle of a sheet that meant he was shifting, for the sniff that meant he was breathing, for the crumpling of a pillowcase that meant he was burying his face. She got nothing. She wanted to hear even the groan of the bed frame - nothing. She waited to see if he'd recognize that she was listening as closely as she could.

And then she thought that maybe he was doing the same for her. Maybe he was making no noise because he was waiting to see if she did. Maybe he was listening just as intently for her, to see if his words had any resonance, to see if his tone had hurt, to see if his actions had caused any lasting effect. Maybe he was waiting for the restlessness of sleep's hiding to hit her.

Or maybe he was debating whether or not he should try to talk to her. Maybe he was thinking over what he'd do if she tried talking to him again. Maybe he was thinking over what he could have done differently, how he could have handled it, what he could have said, and why he didn't do it like he was doing it in his head. Knowing Blaine, that was probably the most likely option.

The sheets that curled around her were cold and unforgiving and she didn't know what to do. If she didn't make a sound, both she and Blaine would be caught in this limbo for much longer than either of them should stand. If she did, she was basically telling Blaine that either she wasn't phased by his anger and could function properly - not true, not that it mattered - or that she was hurt enough to ignore him back - not true, not yet - or that she cared and was hurt, but not about him. None of those things were things she wanted to do to him.

But what else could she do? She couldn't lay in the bed forever, stiff, and rigid, and with sheets that had moved only once and not since. She thought about Blaine's face and how it had looked when she fought Karofsky off of him in the hall at McKinley; how it had looked after the breakup when he darted into the bathroom to cry; how it had looked after the car accident; how it had looked running into his tormentor at the bar; how it had looked seeing Adam; and she wondered what it looked like behind that curtain and was suddenly much more sad than she meant to be.

Without meaning to, she turned her head and her body following it so it pressed against the bedding beneath her. The sound it made was shockingly clear in the still, untouched air, and for a moment she couldn't hear their neighbors under them kiss goodnight, or the ones next door bang against the wall with their bed just enough to make it obvious what they were doing, because the tiny, miniscule paper-on-paper sound she created drowned it out.

Blaine's breath caught and she only just heard it before the almost-silence regained control, and she listened to their neighbors kissing and banging on the walls, and she listened to their dishwasher try to start and fail, and her phone in the living room beep to mean it was done charging, and the computer whirring as it updated - and listening to all of that took up maybe another ten minutes before she gave up and curled in on herself.

It was only moments later that she heard Blaine move, too, and instantly froze. He rolled off his bed so his feet hit the floor softly, and his bedside table drawer pulled out. Something thick slid from the wood into his hands and he picked up something metal - it made a barely discernible clinking noise when he touched it. There was the sound of a book opening, and pages flipping, and then pen met paper and she could hear him writing.

So he thought she was asleep and was writing in his journal like he hadn't in months; in secret, in silence, and in the night.

She breathed deeply evenly, and he never once paused in his writing. She wondered just how badly it must have hurt him to go through that one brief phone call - enough to make him choke on what sounded like a soft sob while he scribbled.

Santana wished she was asleep. She wished she was desperately.

And then she was.

* * *

_Right:_  
_Made Santana Breakfast_  
_Reminded her her shift started early today_  
_Didn't blow up at Prof. Ramirez over the essay_  
_Made dinner_  
_Helped Santana pack_

_Wrong:_  
_Woke up_  
_Ate breakfast_  
_Nagged Santana about work_  
_Went to school_  
_Wanted to yell at Prof. Ramirez_  
_Fell asleep during lunch_  
_Missed lunch date with Kurt because I fell asleep_  
_Came home_  
_Pushed Santana to pack_  
_Made her help me_  
_Answered Nicholas's phone call_  
_Yelled at him_  
_Snapped at Santana_  
_Pushed everyone away_  
_Again_  
_I'm sorry_  
_Talked to myself in this journal_  
_Stop talking to yourself_  
_Freak_  
_Stop_  
_STOP_

* * *

The drive to the airport was uneventful. Blaine and Santana didn't speak the whole way, but both made an effort to speak to the other two completely normally, and neither of them seemed to notice that they avoided their roommate. Airport security was simple enough to get through. Before boarding Kurt called Burt and arranged to be picked up like they'd said they would. Boarding was just as uneventful as the drive.

But then the plane took off, and once Blaine's ears had popped because of the pressurization and then cleared themselves slowly for a minute or two after smooth flying, Blaine took Kurt's hand and looked to him for his opinion of the movie they should watch.

It was innocent. Totally innocent. Blaine was pointing at the screen and Kurt was, too, and then Kurt grabbed his finger with his finger playfully and turned to kiss his cheek. Blaine smiled at the contact, like he normally would, and turned his own blushing head in response and met Kurt's lips.

"Oh, come on!"

The voice groaned from the seat across the isle loudly, and Blaine looked over immediately. There was a man, in his forties, maybe, with graying blond hair and blue eyes, and a pale, wrinkled complexion, though his suit wasn't wrinkled. Not was it flat, stretching over his expanding stomach like that. And he was looking right at them, disgust clear on his face.

"Is there a problem, sir?" asked the stewardess kindly, stepping forward with a smile that seemed plastered on.

"Yes, there is," he said, and Blaine made eye contact; the man sneered disdainfully and growled, "I don't want to have a seat next to a bunch of fairies."

"He did not," Santana hissed under her breath.

"I'm sorry, sir, but they paid for their seats and it's not our policy to move perfectly polite paying customers -"

"Polite?" the man repeated incredulously. "They're polite? They just kissed! In plain sight!"

The stewardess blinked and her smile never faltered. "I'm sorry, I fail to see how that is impolite."

"Damn straight," Santana muttered. Kurt's hand gripped Blaine's tighter, but Blaine didn't turn to face him; he still hadn't broken eye contact, and despite how his stomach was rolling nervously, he couldn't look away. If he looked away, the man won. The man could rally others. As it was, the airplane's crowd staring at them out of Blaine's peripheral vision seemed disinterested or displeased with the scene he was making.

"They're fags," the man pressed angrily. Blaine felt a jarring pain when Kurt's grip tightened impossibly quickly. "I don't want to have to see that. It's disgusting and wrong. I refuse to be seated near them."

"Maybe you'd like to move your seat to the bathroom?" Santana suggested, even more loudly than the man, unbuckling her seat belt and standing up in one fluid motion. "You'd fit right in. In fact, we could probably flush you down the toilet with the other pieces of crap."

"Oh, so the fags have a friend," the man groaned. "Brilliant. Stewardess, I plan to filing an official complaint -"

"I'm sure we can find another seat for you, sir," said the stewardess evenly, her level head triumphing over the anger between the standing girl and the sitting man. "Or perhaps since it's their proximity that bothers you, we could find a different seat for them and their group. Would you like me to speak with the captain?"

"Do whatever you have to do to get the fruitcakes away from me," he snarled. "And their bodyguard."

"Oh, I don't think so," Santana began, her finger rising and jabbing towards him; he flinched as she leaned over Kurt and Blaine's laps. "I could cut your head in half and you still wouldn't be open-minded, but you know what? That doesn't even matter. I don't care if you think my friends kissing is gross. I can guarantee that their relationship is more loving than yours because someone as full of hate as you can't possibly have a relationship as full of love as theirs." The man's face blotched red all over and he opened his mouth, but Santana cut him off. "And if my Brittany was here right now you'd have twice the complaints. And her dads, on top of that!" Santana pointed to Rachel, who nodded proudly, her nose upturned.

"Crazy bitch," the man remarked degradingly. The stewardess slipped away silently; nobody noticed but Blaine out of the corner of his preoccupied eye.

"I may be," Santana retorted, "But you're so much worse than me, pal, you're fatter, balder, older and more wrinkled than Peter Pan in the human world after a beer belly and aging start to set in. You're disruptive, you're unkind, you're stubborn as an ass and your face looks like one, so shut your damn mouth and just let us fly home."

The man looked positively apoplectic, and fumed, his fist coming down with a slam on his arm rest, "No insane lesbian orange picker is gonna lie to me straight to my face with lips that have committed an abomination to the world and lord!"

"ORANGE PICKER?" Santana roared, "I'M FROM LIMA HEIGHTS, BUDDY, I _n__o toleraré SU ESTÚPIDO DE MIERDA MIERDA TRUCK BOCA__!_" and the whole plane winced. Kurt's hand left Blaine's, and if he'd had a moment he'd have stretched it at the chance when he was out of Kurt's painful constraint, but instead both he and Kurt had to physically hold Santana back with the help of Rachel. Blaine finally broke the eye contact so he could look at Santana, who had begun swearing at the top of her lungs in Spanish.

The stewardess chose that moment to come back in, and said, in her calm and totally unphased voice, "If you'll please calm down, we've located new seats for both parties. Sir," she said, facing the man, her smile genuine as Santana quieted down enough to glare sharply at him, "If you'll come with me, we've found your party seats in first class."

"Wha-" Santana started.

"Right this way," the stewardess finished, turning around so she faced Kurt and Blaine and the girls, her arm extending toward the front of the cabin. "The man who caused the disturbance will be sitting in third class, as far away from you as possibly."

"WHAT?!" the man opposed vehemently. "I DEMAND -"

"We all demand you'd shut the hell up!" interrupted the woman sitting behind the man, her hair pulled into an African turban, her accent matching her attire. "You wanted to be away from them, so take what you receive. I just want to get to Ohio without having to deal with you or having to explain to my child why there are people filled with such hatred that are permitted to live."

The man's face drained of color and he stared at her blankly while Kurt pulled Blaine to his feet and Rachel thanked the stewardess kindly. "I'm not the thing that needs explaining," he sputtered futilely.

"Really?" the woman arched an eyebrow. "My child understands love, but I have never shown him hate. I do not wish to expose him to such awful things until he can deal with it independently. You, sir, have destroyed that hope." She looped her long, graceful arm around the quivering boy sitting in the seat beside her, who automatically buried his head in her side. "I speak on behalf of all reasonable people when I ask you to follow your orders and leave."

The man was still speechless when the second stewardess arrived and took him into third class, and the whole cabin stood and gave tremendous applause the moment he was gone. Santana bowed and the woman nodded graciously. Kurt smiled at everyone - and Blaine opened the door to first class and pulled him through, understanding the surprise and pride on his face and knowing that it was as fake as the tearlessness state Blaine was forcing himself to stay in.

"You alright?" Kurt asked him gently when the girls followed them through and shut the door.

Blaine smiled at him. "Yeah, fine. Proud of you." No, I'm not fine. But I am proud. Please believe me. Please let it be enough, at least for now.

Kurt reached for his hand again and squeezed it - tenderly, this time, and whispered, "I love you."

Blaine whispered it in return and put his head on Kurt's shoulder and didn't remove it; not even when the stewardess showed them to their seats and they sat and buckled themselves in, or when the captain made the announcement that any passengers who dared behave with such vulgar attitudes would be forbidden to ride in the future, or when he personally thanked Santana - by name, which she gave the stewardess beforehand - for standing up for those she loved. And if he shed a tear or two, Kurt didn't mention it or feel it - he just ran his thumb over his knuckles in that way he did and talked to him mindlessly about plans they'd already discussed.

* * *

When they got off the plane and walked into the waiting room, Burt was there, wearing a grin and an old flannel shirt and jeans and work boots and a baseball cap, like always, and he held his arms open wide when he saw Kurt, who ran into them without a second thought. "Hey, kiddo," he greeted happily, his eyes closed and his arms tight around his son.

And then Kurt pulled away and Rachel tackled Burt, who snickered at her enthusiasm and hugged her back.

And then Burt raised his eyebrows at Santana, and she paused, her arms still crossed over her shoulders, and when he held his arms open Blaine nudged her back with his elbow - and she rolled her eyes and embraced him lightly. But he wasn't having that; he gripped her to him and spun her around, and she laughed outright and kissed his cheek when he set her on her feet again.

"Hi, Burt," Blaine said in salutation, remembering to call him by his first name and not his title, as was his habit.

When Burt hugged him just as tightly as he had the others - possibly even tighter - it didn't only catch him off guard, it made him cry again. Burt noticed. Burt asked about it.

And so Kurt took him aside and let the others go to the car while he explained.

Burt caught up with them right before they opened the car doors and he hugged all of them again. Blaine managed not to cry. And he was terrified of that, because it meant he was hiding feelings again. It meant they were disappearing. It meant he couldn't feel.

And the last time that happened…


	3. Part 3

Blaine knew Kurt was out shopping with the girls - a little home retail therapy never hurt anybody but some wallets and bank accounts - but he thought he'd be back in time for the dinner they'd planned with his father. It wasn't even technically Father's Day until the following day, but Blaine felt like it should have taken precedent over a pair of "gorgeous Italian shoes, they're copper-colored and dark and glossy, oh my god I need them" - and maybe he also felt like a pre-planned dinner with his boyfriend ought to have been enough to drag Kurt away from the stores.

But no, of course not. And he didn't think that sarcastically; Kurt didn't trust him, and he couldn't forget that, especially when he was making it so obvious.

So when Blaine got Kurt's text at the restaurant saying he wouldn't make it to dinner and wouldn't be home until late, he wasn't surprised, but he wasn't pleased, either. And when he looked up and saw Burt walking toward him, he grimaced at the thought of the news.

"Hey, bud!" Burt called to him, keys jingling as he shoved them in his jacket pocket. "How long have you been waiting? Where's Kurt?"

"I've only been waiting a few minutes," Blaine lied easily, smiling up at him. "And Kurt's still at the mall. He says he won't be able to make it, but he should be home by tonight. I think."

"Oh." Burt's smile never faltered. "Well, that's alright, let's go eat anyways. I'm starving. I tell you, that garage is a right pain in the ass to take care of, especially with all these political trips to take to places." He helped Blaine to his feet, and once he was standing, looped his arm around the shorter man's shoulder with ease and comfort, walking inside the restaurant, oblivious to Blaine's surprise. "Carole's trying her best and Finn helps in his free time, but we all need to face that since Lizzie died, I'm the only one who really knows how to manage the place."

"Lizzie?" Blaine asked innocently, the name sticking. "That sounds familiar. Isn't Elizabeth Kurt's middle name?"

"Yes, it is," Burt chuckled, "He had me legally change it after his mother died. It was his mother's name, you know. That's who I was talking about. My Lizzie."

"Oh." Blaine wasn't sure how to respond. "Well, I - I'm sorry."

"We've all moved on by now," Burt told him earnestly, and without thinking Blaine pulled the chair out for him. The way Burt said it wasn't dismissive, or too light, but rather sober, and honest, and he wasn't telling Blaine that it didn't hurt anymore, he was telling Blaine that there were things stronger than the hurt. Blaine nodded and Burt sat. "Thanks."

"It's no problem," Blaine assured him, taking the seat opposite him. Breadstix was always nice to be at, and the familiar booths and smells and sounds were as welcoming as a warm bed. "So, I… I hope you don't mind me asking -"

"How did she die?" Burt guessed, picking up his menu. "Kid, if Kurt hasn't told you by now, I think that's something to bring up with him."

"Yeah," Blaine agreed absently. "I will." But he knew he wouldn't; he wouldn't dare bring up a subject so painful for Kurt when he already knew Kurt was withholding it along with his trust.

"And how are your parents doing?" Burt asked, his eyes raking over the menu.

"My… what?"

"Your parents," Burt repeated, raising his eyes and seeing Blaine's face and then raising his eyebrows along with them. "How are they?"

"Oh, they're…" Blaine cleared his throat, which was suddenly clogged by a lump. "I'm sure they're fine."

"Something you're not telling me?" Burt said, in the exact same tone. Not accusatory, not suspicious, just curious and slightly concerned.

"I - well, I have no idea how my mother's doing," Blaine confessed, "And the last time I talked to my father he was rather unhappy with me."

"Oh?" Burt set the menu down again. "And why is that?"

"I…" How on earth was he supposed to answer? Little white lies were fine - saying he'd not been waiting long, that he was fine, that it didn't matter when it did. But to lie to Burt about something so monumental was criminal, and Blaine would feel dirtier than he had in weeks if he did. Well, almost. Not quite as dirty as when he'd overheard Kurt say - "They kind of… um, right after graduation last year they disowned me."

"They what?!" Burt's voice rose and several people from neighboring tables looked over at them, judging them with their eyes before turning back and murmuring. Burt was glaring at Blaine, and even though he knew it wasn't meant for him, it was still difficult to be on the receiving end of such a look.

"Disowned me," Blaine repeated, in a whisper, leaning in, fingering the edge of his menu nervously. "But it's alright. They put money into my bank account each month to bribe me into basically denying I'm their son to people who don't already know. Every now and then I'll get a call from Cooper asking about why I don't talk with them anymore -"

"Wait, your own brother doesn't know?" Burt's astonishment was almost infectious; for a moment, even Blaine began to suspect he didn't deserve it. "That's ridiculous. It's been a year, how do you keep it hidden for that long?"

Blaine shrugged the matter off. "We don't interact that much anymore. I mean, we never really did when he moved away, but he's getting desperate to land a role and he's going crazy with auditions recently, so that's even less -"

"Let me get this straight," Burt cut him off, anger still clearly speaking for him. "A year ago, over a year ago, even, your parents disowned you and paid you to act like you'd never so much as laid eyes on them. You tell nobody, not even your brother, and manage to keep it a secret for such a stretch of time people just automatically stop getting curious about it. How do you stand that?"

"Stand what?"

"How do you stand being treated like crap like that?"

Blaine blinked a few times, not understanding. How could he at first? Him being disowned was almost an act of kindness, and not telling Cooper was something he'd agreed to. His parents didn't hate him and weren't saying they did. They were saying that they simply couldn't love him and couldn't live with the guilt of knowing that they didn't love their son - so they stopped letting him be their son. It wasn't all his fault and it wasn't all pinned to be but that seemed to be how Burt was taking it - and, to be completely fair, Blaine had treated himself in far worse ways far too often to even think of being disowned as being treated badly. "I don't know. I guess I'm not as proud as you and Kurt are."

"You should be, kid," Burt sighed, picking up his menu again. "You've got the talent, and the looks, and the intelligence, and the drive, but you've got absolutely no self-confidence to speak of unless you're faking it for the sake of someone else."

"That's not - that's not true," Blaine argued, averting his eyes.

"No, look at me, I'm talking straight to you," Burt insisted. "You've got all the reasons in the world to be the cockiest, most self-absorbed person ever, but you're the exact opposite. Trust me."

"Let's just…" Blaine shook his head. "Let's just change the topic."

"Alright, fine," Burt amended, sitting back. "Why did your parents disown you?"

"I don't think that counts -"

"Sure it does," Burt pressed on. "So why?"

Blaine looked at Burt closely, and at how worry and concern laced his gruff and angry voice, and how his eyebrows were furrowed and his cap was slipping and his cheeks were flushed and he didn't care at all. "I - because I - you know -"

"Because you're gay?" Burt prompted, and Blaine nodded. "God damn it," Burt swore under his breath, "I swear, I'll get my hands on these people -"

"No, don't!" Blaine urged him mindlessly, bending forward and stretching out his hand to cover Burt's without thinking. "Don't go looking for them or for trouble. They're not even my parents anymore, so it doesn't matter."

"Of course it matters, Blaine!" Burt seemed personally affronted by his words meant to reassure. "You need some parental figure in your life! Who's going to take care of you?"

"I've been doing that for years," Blaine told him, "And if I can't, I've got Kurt and Santana and Rachel all at the drop of a hat, and Artie and you all down here if I put in a little effort. I'm fine and I will be fine, Burt. Don't let it bug you. Please."

"And the others homophobes?" Burt's words seemed to enclose around him, suffocate him as Burt nearly spit them out. Blaine began wishing desperately for their server to arrive, but it was, after all, a Saturday evening, and Breadstix was always busiest then. "Don't they irritate you? Don't tell me _they_ don't matter."

"I never said they don't matter," Blaine retorted, desperation kindling into a small flame of frustration, "I said their actions don't. And I stand by that. Prejudice is just ignorance, Burt. I will never perpetuate it or validate it, but I will refuse to be affected by it. I am not ignorant - and neither are you, so if you could please let it all go -"

"So are you saying that the man on the plane didn't affect you?" Burt demanded, trying with a significant amount of effort to elicit something from him, and Blaine wished he knew what it was. "Are you saying his words -"

"I'm saying his words were wrong and hurtful and yes, they upset me, but not because of the substance he was using but the reaction he received," Blaine rambled, trying to get Burt to frankly shut up. He looked around for an available waiter who hadn't seen them crammed into the small booth yet, but saw none that weren't working. "It bothers me that some people are perfectly fine with and may outright support such ignorance, and it bothers me that those opposed feel so offended and oppressed by it they feel it's necessary to scream simply to be heard over the hate. But I will never hold a human being liable for what their head was taught against their heart. At least not any more than I'd hold them liable for their heart's desires against their head. And I want you to _drop it_!"

Blaine hadn't meant to raise his voice at the end, but Burt kept opening his mouth to cut him off and he'd had to speak louder to make him close it again, and he was tired of the conversation they were having. He didn't want to discuss these things.

"But you still need a parent, Blaine, a guide, someone to look up to who's an adult and can help you through things other people your age can't," Burt said, much quieter, much calmer, after a moment of silence between them, his eyes much kinder when they met Blaine's again briefly.

"I thought I had you for that," Blaine confessed, sitting back in his chair and slumping down, not daring to raise his eyes.

There was another moment of silence before Burt spoke again, his voice so low even Blaine had to strain to hear it. "You do, kid. You've always got me."

* * *

"Wait, wait," Blaine chortled over his empty salad plate, "She - she stepped on it?"

Burt was roaring with laughter on the other side of the table, and Blaine had had to join in when he got to the punchline of his joke. "Yes!" Burt guffawed noisily. "She stepped - on the ball!"

"Oh my god!"

"I know!"

* * *

"What are you doing?" Burt asked, fondly but sternly, as Blaine pulled out his wallet.

"Um… paying?" Blaine was confused; they needed to pay and he always paid. What was unusual?

"Don't even think about it," Burt waved his hand away. "I've got it."

"Really?" the word slipped out before he knew it would, and after it did Burt looked at him quizzically.

"Of course," Burt said it as if it was the most common knowledge a person could have.

* * *

When Kurt got home, Blaine and Burt were watching the television, surfing channels and chatting, laughing often between things they said. Rachel behind him raised an eyebrow when he paused to smile at the scene. Santana was already with her parents, but Rachel had been Kurt's ride, and she was waiting for a few minutes before she took off for her dads' house. "What?" she asked.

"Nothing," Kurt responded, moving into the room, his shopping bags in his arms. Blaine and Burt both stopped and looked up at the sound of his voice, and both smiled. "Hello to both of you," Kurt greeted, smiling back, relieved they weren't angry they'd missed dinner. "Sorry about dinner, I -"

"No, it was good," Burt told him. "I did some talking with Blaine I've needed to do for a while."

Kurt felt his breath catch for a moment. What had they talked about that made him use those words? Had Blaine told them that they were engaged? They agreed to wait to tell people, even Santana and Rachel, until they'd been living with each other for at least a few weeks - he looked at Blaine, his panic of the quiet kind, and Blaine, seeing it, understood and shook his head the tiniest bit.

Kurt nodded in relief and turned back to his dad, who had missed the silent exchange. "Good, good. How was the food?"

"It's Breadstix, Kurt," Blaine answered teasingly. "How do you think the food was?"

Kurt grinned, matching Blaine's playful attitude, loving it. He didn't know what had brought it on, but Blaine like this was a Blaine he loved. Lately, he'd been so… on edge, even behind his calm exterior. It had made Kurt nervous. How he was acting then, however, set Kurt's worries aside, and he turned and wished Rachel a good night, and so did the others when she peeked her head in and waved goodbye.

* * *

Cold sheets. That's what Blaine felt. The sheets around him were clammy and cold, and not because nobody was in them, but because he was even clammier and colder. Kurt's bed wasn't ready to welcome him into warmth like it was Kurt, who laid beside him, his back to Blaine, curled tightly into a ball.

The sheets were as stiff and unforgiving as Kurt must have felt around him since he cheated. Every time he looked at Kurt now, it was a reminder that Kurt only pretended to be fine in the relationship, and he had to settle the discomfort in his stomach because he felt like throwing up, knowing he caused it. Knowing it was his fault.

He kept staring at Kurt's ceiling, like he had been. Blaine knew Kurt always thought he'd be in a relationship with someone taller. It was obvious in how he slept when he was alone; curled up tightly, as small as he could be, very much like the little spoon. It was just another thing Blaine had caused him to settle for - and he could do nothing about his height, but it was his fault he'd made Kurt go against what he'd wanted.

The waves on the ceiling were familiar by then. Not what Kurt wanted. Those words seemed written across the wall above his head he stared at. Even the corners of his eyes told him it was scrawled - in Kurt's own handwriting - everywhere. On the ceiling, on the bed, on him…

That was when he knew he needed to say something, to someone, and if it was for no other reason than that he'd left his journal in New York to try and force himself not to use it, so be it.

He rolled out of the bed and threw the sheets off himself. He knew it wouldn't wake Kurt - he'd been asleep for over an hour, he was deeply into it and wouldn't be dragged out easily. He shuffled off the bed, the unforgiving sheets left behind and the cold of the floor stinging his bare feet as he moved slowly and stiff-jointed to his bag by the dresser. His phone was resting on top of it; he grabbed it and moved as silently as he could to the bathroom, closing the door without so much as a click and leaning against it, the sound of Kurt's breathing now cut off, his ears empty.

He held down '2' and waited while it called Santana.

It only rang once before she answered. Her voice was grouchy and croaky with sleep when she said, "Hobbit, if you don't have a good reason for calling me right now, I swear…"

Blaine didn't know how to say it. He needed to say something, but what? "San, I don't… I don't…"

"What's wrong?" The voice was different; still croaky, but more concerned than grouchy. Blaine felt the guilt bubble up in his throat sickeningly, like bile, and looked down at his toes; though the darkness, he couldn't even see them.

There were several answers to that question.

For the first answer, he could tell her about overhearing Kurt's words that let him know exactly what went on in the other half of his relationship, and how badly he'd messed up. He could tell her about all the unspoken words than needed spoken and all the spoken words he wished had gone unsaid. He could tell her exactly for disgusted and estranged from Kurt it made him feel to live with it in silence.

The second answer stemmed from the first. That horrible sensation he suffered through as if swimming through maple syrup could be cured, he was certain, if he just tried enough, if he was just good enough. The surprise visit to Ohio had been spoiled by Santana. The dinner had been meant to be a time they could bond again, talk, and just be normal people, with no fear of homework or jobs or secrets, or anything. Kurt had missed it, probably because shopping was more appealing than looking at someone who broke his heart. He could tell her about how hard he was trying and how it was draining him and how he couldn't keep it up unless he actually became someone better, someone stronger.

He could tell her that Burt at the dinner had made him feel even worse. He could tell her about how he'd shouted and assumed and accused and glared, and even if none of it was for him, he was the medium it passed through, and it stung. He could tell her how it also stung that he wasn't even worthy of a response for him, just ones for his parents and his words. He could tell her how horrible he'd felt because he felt so greedy over that towards someone as loving as Burt.

He could tell her about how being so close to his parents, about being less than an hour's drive away, was making him itch to see them and itch to leave at the same time. He wanted his mom to hug him again, even if the last time she really meant it was when he was thirteen. His wanted his dad to smooth the sides of his hair over and tweak his bowtie before he went out like he used to. He wanted to go home and feel like it was still his. He could tell her about how it was his fault but not his fault, about how his father calling him to say that he shouldn't visit just made him want to fix, want to fix everything.

He could tell her everything. He could tell her about how Miss July worked him harder and with more menace than everyone else, and how his workload was killing him, and about how everyone from his past was showing up and it was like getting hit in the gut every time it happened, and how he was starting to hate so much of the mirror that even the edges of the reflection seemed tainted when he was in the picture. He could tell her that.

No, he couldn't.

He couldn't tell Santana that. Because as hard as she tried to listen, she wouldn't let him finish. She wouldn't hear him. She'd hear someone scared and pathetic and small and she'd treat him as largely as she could to show him he wasn't what she heard. She loved him too much to believe he could forever stay as pitiful as he was, he knew that, even if he didn't know why. And with how he'd snapped at her and sent her away the other night, and after how she'd stood up for him on the plane and he hadn't had the guts to say thank you, he wanted to tell her everything… but he couldn't.

"I… I need to - I don't think -"

"Blaine, you need to stop and slow down," she instructed. "Take a deep breath, organize your thoughts, and then tell me. I'll wait."

He couldn't tell her because he was scared and she didn't deserve to be.

"It's alright," Blaine found himself saying, and wondered who the stranger commanding his mouth was. "I just felt - I just -" and then he was in control of his lips again, and fumbled over them. "I think I just wanted to ask if it's - it's normal to… um, to…"

"Okay, B," Santana crooned, "Just take a minute, okay? Just take a minute. Compose yourself. It's alright."

He wondered what she thought had happened. He wondered what she heard. He wondered if it was him or what she hoped wasn't him or what she hoped was.

"I want to go home," was what surprised him the most. Did he really? Or did he just want to go away? And which home did he want to go to? He wasn't even sure.

"In what way?" Santana asked slowly. "In a way that makes you feel like you're going to cry, or a way that makes you feel like you're going to vomit?"

"In - I - yes. No, I mean - I don't know." But as he spoke, the guilt-bile seemed to become more tangible, and his eyes grew warm and thick, and he dared not blink. "Both?"

"Okay," Santana responded, sounding unsure. "Blaine, do you - you've been acting off lately, is this something to do with that?"

Great. So he hadn't even been able to hide it well enough to come across as fine. His acting was terrible, too. "Y- I… how… what does broken trust feel like to you?"

And though he hadn't meant to answer the question, he was suddenly dying to hear the answer. The words had slipped out past his head and his thoughts, unseen, unheard, until they were on the other side of his ears, and he knew that though it would be different for Kurt than it would be for Santana, if he understood even the slightest bit what Kurt might be feeling, he could make it up. He could try harder, he could have a goal.

"What do you mean?" she asked, and he could hear how glad she was to hear a coherent thought come out of him.

"What is trust like?" he elaborated. "For you. What's it like? And then broken trust, what about it? Can you tell me?"

"Why?"

"Please?"

He heard her sigh and mutter loosely before she truly replied. "Trusting someone is like putting your head on the guillotine and knowing they won't cut it off." Blaine nodded; it was a fair representation of how he felt around Kurt. "Broken trust is when they don't decapitate you and they plunge a knife through your heart instead." Blaine gave a start at her words - he'd have thought… "Though you'd have been disappointed and hurt that they chopped off your head if they had, you'd have at least been a bit prepared - but there was no way in hell you were expecting that knife." Santana concluded it with finality, and Blaine found himself wishing that he'd never asked, because the answer was so harshly real - even when delivered kindly - that he was terrified.

"Okay."

"Okay?" she repeated, confused.

"Thank you," he said, and he poured out all gratitude he had left inside his musty, dank chest. "For telling me that and for shouting at the man on the plane and for being my roommate and -"

"Okay, okay," Santana stopped him, with a slight chuckle, "You need to sleep, and I need to sleep, and while I appreciate the overdue thanks, you can deliver it at a time when you're more capable of doing so. Alright?"

Blaine smiled fakely and then forgot he didn't have to, so instead he made his voice maintain its sound, which was obviously convincing, at least over the phone. "Yeah, alright. Goodnight, San."

"G'night," she responded, and then there was a click, and a dial tone, and Blaine was reminded horribly of how his father had ended his call and how empty his ears had rung when he'd taken the phone away from it. Nevertheless, his hand pulled away from his head, his phone with it, into the distilled silence of the bathroom. And he recognized that silence that had been his best friend and his worst enemy before he found steel, and it was like Kurt wasn't speaking to him all over again, because neither of them were saying what they had to. The only difference was that what Kurt had to say was important; what Blaine wanted to say would only waste time and feelings that had begun slipping from him already. His heart was beating, maybe a bit faster than normal, but he felt like the silence was the only thing there was - no happy, no sad, just the silence and all it carried. Total apathy.

And he knew he was in trouble, but the silence didn't care - the silence _cut_. Just not enough to make him bleed out the emptiness so he could breath air full of something again.

* * *

When Kurt woke up, Blaine was fully on the other side of the bed, on top of the covers, socks on his feet, his back to his boyfriend, and he was still. Kurt smiled at the figure, though he wondered why he was so far away, before realizing that he was in the same position, just with his neck turned to look for the other. Blaine was sensitive to those kind of things - body language when sleeping seemed to be the one thing Blaine always took to heart more than anything else. Kurt wondered just how confused he was by it and if he'd ever considered that Kurt had gone to bed before him and that it wasn't because he didn't want to cuddle that he'd fallen asleep like that.

Kurt moved against the cold no-man's land of the sheets between them and smiled when he pressed his front up against Blaine's back. He moved his arm over top of Blaine and hoisted himself over him just enough to see his face so he could kiss his cheek.

He saw the tear stains on Blaine's pillow and the salty trails on his face, and the red, puffy rims of his eyes, and his smile faded. He kissed his cheek softly, and then lowered himself back down, tangling their feet together and hugging him as close as he could through the bedding. He wondered if Blaine's happiness had been an act, or if the tears had been him crying out the last of the unhappiness.

He hoped it was the latter and knew that it wasn't, but he just kissed the back of Blaine's neck tenderly and snuggled against him as best he could.

* * *

When Blaine woke up, he knew he'd had a nightmare. He couldn't remember it, but he knew he'd had one, because his face was tight with dried tears, and his pillow was wet and cold in small splotches, and Kurt's arms were around him. He'd gone to bed no wanting to cuddle, but Blaine must have been frightened enough to have guilted him into snuggling. And Blaine felt guilty. Guilty and terrified of whatever had been in his head.

Many people find it easier to recover from nightmares they don't remember than ones they do. Blaine was not one of those. Every time he forgot a nightmare, he spent all his time until the next one trying to figure out what it was based on how he woke up. It was an impossible task, but he felt he had to set at it; if he could figure out what was scaring him so badly, he could try to conquer it, or maybe stay away from things that would trigger it.

But Kurt was there. Kurt, with his lips on Blaine's neck, his arms around his chest, his fingers playing with the curls along his ears, his mouth moving in words of soft comfort as they touched chastely across his skin. It took a little while for Blaine to figure out what he was saying - and he was completely and totally shocked to find out that it was a prayer.

Not a deity, it seemed, but a prayer to the idea of someone who had the power to make things better. It made sense that Kurt, when looking for someone to helped, looked to someone he could see, could touch. It was a trait they both shared - and it was one that had ultimately led Blaine to the bed of someone else when he couldn't reach Kurt's. The reminder of that that his mind conjured up suddenly attacked him, and he fought to remain still and silent in Kurt's arms.

Blaine couldn't make out enough of the words to fully understand what he was praying for, but he knew that it wasn't just a peaceful night's sleep for him. Why should he go out of his way for that? A nightmare of Kurt's would be treated with a lot more care than a prayer, and that was certain, but the only reason Blaine could imagine Kurt was praying for was so that he could learn to trust his boyfriend or that he'd at least sleep easily.

Neither of those were what the tone implied, but then, Kurt thought he was sleeping. It was bound to be politer and quieter.

In the small window Blaine could see, the sky was still black. He felt as if he'd been sleeping for hours, and it hadn't been until well after midnight that he'd fallen asleep. How long could the hours be? It seemed like the night was dragging on and on and on, and it would never end, because they would continue to grow and learn and break and the night sky wouldn't lift until their eyelids sank. There is a rule that is universal that every person who has had trouble sleeping knows; waiting for the sunrise is a little easier when the sun hasn't set yet than it is when the sky is black.

Kurt obviously didn't know Blaine was awake, but what could he do? If broken trust was like being stabbed at the guillotine, he'd caused Kurt a thousand times more damage than Kurt had caused him, ever, or at least that Kurt had meant to cause him, or that he hadn't blown out of proportion. If he asked what he was doing, if he acted like he'd just woken up, he'd be lying. But if he said he'd been lying there, listening to him say things that were obviously personal… well, that wouldn't help anything.

On the other hand, it was honest, and Kurt didn't seem aware that he was awake, though his words had stopped and his lips had pressed themselves tenderly to his neck once more, in a kiss, not speaking as he had been. He seemed finished - 'please' seemed a fairly reasonable end to such a prayer - and so Blaine tried speaking.

But instead, something inside him snapped, and he realized that if he really broke Kurt's trust, gaining it would take more than surprises. It would take constant attention and respect when he needed space - it would take listening to his problems and not bothering him with his own - it would be weeks, months, of endless care and taking care, and Blaine had to do it. And he knew that once he started, actually kissing Kurt without _making_ an opportunity for it first would be scarce, and there was Kurt, warm and flesh and blood and with a pulse and curled against him, and so he wriggled just a bit.

"Hey," Kurt greeted, his voice just as quiet, but clearly directed toward him, as he shifted in Kurt's arms so they were facing. "You're awake."

"I am," Blaine confirmed, and closed the distance between them softly, making sure that Kurt was alright with it, and only kissing him once his eyes were closed. And closed were his eyes after their lips touched, because he'd forgotten what slow, lazy kisses tasted like, and how they felt when they were just slow enough to not really be fast and just lazy enough to be completely natural. And Kurt responded more willingly than he'd dared to dream; his fingers pressed the back of Blaine's head more firmly to his and he opened his mouth, his breath hot.

But Blaine could feel more heat rushing downward than out of his lips, and he pulled back - if he did _that_, if he slept with Kurt, really slept, he'd be even more off-balance. Sex was what had broken Kurt's trust in him in the first place. Doing it with Kurt while he still felt like that would be… sickening. Blaine wasn't actually sure he could force Kurt to do that, no matter how much Kurt was obviously trying to reassure himself that it would be fine. Because he was trying to make Kurt trust him again, not force him to think he should.

"Baby," Kurt moaned when their lips parted, and Blaine wanted to cry again, because he was trying so _hard_ to make himself feel okay. His eyes opened - his beautiful, gorgeous, hopeful glasz eyes - and he looked at Blaine with something akin to concern. "Why were you crying?"

"Crying?" Blaine repeated instead of asking.

"I know you know you were," Kurt murmured, averting his eyes, his fingers back to tracing small, pointless designs of swirls and dots on his neck, trailing down a bit before coming back up. "You always know when you cry." He brought his gaze back up, and it locked with Blaine's again, and he furrowed his brow. "B?"

"I'm not sure," Blaine admitted, and it wasn't a lie. "I think I had a nightmare and I just can't remember it."

"I'm right here," Kurt breathed, his arms tightening, warm, his pulse beating against Blaine's.

Blaine swallowed. "I know."

"Mm," Kurt hummed, not accepting or rejecting his affirmation before moving on to a subject Blaine didn't expect. "Do you trust me?"

It was a very simple question, and Blaine was stunned by it; if anything, Kurt had the reasons not to trust. Why wouldn't Blaine trust Kurt? Kurt was… well, he was Kurt. He wasn't always the warmest of people - in fact, he could be quite cold sometimes - and he had a habit of just emptying himself out so new thoughts and feelings could form without actually being aware of what he was doing, but he was loving, and passionate, and judging, and gentle, and fair, and brave, and talented, and devoted, and human, like anyone else, and his flaws were never going to be the kind of thing Blaine would say made him perfect, but Blaine loved Kurt's kind of imperfection, and only Kurt's. Never had he met a deformed puzzle piece that fit perfectly with him, another deformed puzzle piece. It was a twist of fate that they'd been warped and twisted into two people who fit together perfectly. Perfectly imperfect. "Of course I do," Blaine assured him, hushed with his voice, shifting to nuzzle him tenderly with his nose so he might feel it, too. "Of course I trust you. I trust you with everything, Kurt, you know that."

Kurt snuggled into the embrace of Blaine's cheek. "I know, but you're really sad lately, and I was wondering why you wouldn't tell me why."

"I… Kurt…" Blaine wasn't sure what to say. To ask to put it off would require Kurt trusting him to bring it up again, or Kurt thinking he was lying about trusting him… but he couldn't bring it up now. What would he say? _I know you don't trust me and that's why but hey, it's okay, right?_ How could he possibly pin things on Kurt like that? It wasn't as if it was Kurt's fault. But there was something neither he nor Santana had spoken about since it happened, and so when Kurt sighed, Blaine let himself say, "My dad called me a few days ago…"

"What?!" Kurt's voice wasn't any louder, but it was sharper, and he jerked away in surprise. "When? What did he say?!"

"Nothing, really," Blaine shrugged. "He just said that he heard I was visiting and he wanted to make sure I wouldn't come to see them, and then that he didn't want to be involved in my life."

Kurt was frozen for a moment, and then sagged back into Blaine. "B, I'm sorry…"

"Hey, no," Blaine kissed his cheek without thinking. "It wasn't that bad. I just didn't expect it is all."

"But it's made you so sad…"

"No, Kurt," Blaine whispered, "I'm not sad, I'm not. I'm just tired."

"Don't."

"Don't what?"

"That's what you said last time."

"Last time?"

"When you came over, and Rachel was out, and you started crying and you told me that you were really upset that you couldn't do the dance routine well enough for Miss July's class -"

"That was different, Kurt, very different," Blaine told him earnestly, "Please believe me. I _was_ tired. I'd been practicing for weeks and she still yelled at me for it, and I just couldn't get it right. It's not like I'm not used to not doing things right. I'm sorry that I'm worrying you, I really don't want to -"

"And now?"

"What?"

"What about now?" Kurt's breath was hitched and oh, god, Blaine had caused this, he'd made Kurt this upset. "You said last time you were tired, but what about now?"

"I am tired," Blaine told him, unsure of what else to say. "I don't - I don't know what you want me to tell you, Kurt, but if you tell me I'll say it."

"Oh, no, no…" Kurt murmured, dropping his head to Blaine's collarbone in dejection. "I really didn't want you to say _that_."

And Blaine dropped his head, too, and inhaled the way Kurt smelled in the morning, and how the freckled, pale skin on his shoulder was so soft, and how his pulse would change whether or not his voice did, and Blaine said, "I'm sorry."

"It's not your fault," Kurt's muffled reply escaped the confines of the pillow and Blaine resting on it. Blaine didn't believe him.


	4. Part 4

_**TRIGGER WARNING: SELF-HARM**_

Santana was woken up - again - by her phone going off on her nightstand. She groaned and flopped over to grab it lazily, the sheets her body hadn't warmed yet sharply cold against her, even through her pajamas. Her hand slapped against it and the chilled material of it was slick in her palm - she curled her fingers around it and answered it, using her free hand to comb her hair out of her face with her fingers. Holding it to her ear, she said, "Hello?"

"Santana?"

"Britt," she said in return, more awake automatically, stopping with her hair and rubbing her face to stretch it into alertness. "What's up?"

"I just wanted to ask you to tell your dad happy Father's Day for me."

"That's sweet, Britt," Santana told her, smiling despite herself at the fact that even though she was halfway across the country she remembered the tradition she'd upheld since they'd become friends. "Of course I will. I'm sure he's looking forward to it?"

"And I wanted to ask you a question, too," Brittany said, and Santana paused, listening to exactly how quiet she was. "When you dropped out of college, did… did you do it because of the caseload, or something else?"

"College and I simply weren't meant to be, Britt," Santana tried to explain. "The work wasn't too hard, and the people weren't too despicable, I just… I wanted to be closer to you, and -"

"So you did it for me?"

It wasn't bold or brave of Brittany to ask, but Brittany knew her, and knew that if she asked early in the morning, and after something that made Santana smile, and if she asked Santana, she'd get a straight answer. Academically, Brittany lacked, but not for lack of intelligence; hers was coded in a way schools didn't understand and Santana had learned to, and her knowledge of people was what she thrived under. "In a way, yes," Santana replied, swallowing. "But it's alright, I -"

"Santana, you said you and college weren't meant to be," Brittany interrupted her, and that was when Santana knew something was up. She'd suspected, but Brittany didn't interrupt her. She just didn't. And if she did, something was wrong.

"Britt…" she trailed off, letting her anxiety over the situation flow through the filter she used when speaking.

"Are we?"

Santana knew what she was asking, but she closed her eyes and took a breath anyway before asking, "Are we what?"

"Are we meant to be? Together?" Brittany swallowed, and Santana could picture, could picture her perfectly, how her hair was unbrushed and up in a sloppy bun, how she was wearing a tight t-shirt and oversized, floppy pants, how she was sitting on her heels and bending forward, looking at something. The picture in her head was so startlingly real that Santana was almost certain that it was reality.

"You know I love you," Santana finally responded, her voice cracking despite how hard she tried to keep it from doing so. "You know I always will. And you know I think we are. So why are you asking?"

"I'm - I'm - Tana, I'm lonely, I'm really lonely," Brittany confessed in a hushes whisper. "I miss you, and I miss my unicorn, and I miss the New Directions, and I miss Mr. Schue, and I miss how I could wake up and know that we could defeat the world with what they threw at us. And I'm lonely and I love you and I miss you."

Her voice trembled in the way only Brittany's could, and Santana heard her crying without her actually sniffling. Brittany had always been good at crying silently until someone noticed, and then she'd break. If Santana let on that she knew she was crying, Brittany would become inconsolable, and no matter how much it broke her heart, she wouldn't let Brittany slip that low. "I know, honey, I know," Santana murmured. "Believe me, I know. But you're going to go back to sleep, and you're going to wake up, and you're going to realize that you're only ever going to be lonely if I'm dead, and I will never die on you."

"You _know_ you can't promise that," Brittany hiccuped.

Santana refused to let herself choke on the words. "I'm a firm believer in the power of a well-meant and well-earned promise."

"Just - Tana, I really want to hug you, and - a-and -"

"Britt, listen to me," Santana pleaded, "You're going to be fine. As soon as I have the money and time, I'll come and visit you, okay? A visit is long overdue anyway. I'll bring Kurt with me, alright? And Blaine? And Rachel. Maybe Artie." Brittany sniffled and Santana held back a swear. "Hell, I'd even bring Trouty Mouth if it meant that you'd understand that it's okay to miss me as long as you don't let it control you."

"I've never been so alone, I - I feel like I'm missing half of my body, for how well I can handle things -"

"No, no, Britt, you're not alone, you're not, you're just lonely," Santana whispered, her throat constricting. "I love you. I love you so, so much, Brittany, and if I could just kiss you, if I could just somehow make it better, I - I - B-Britt, I don't know how to help, I'm lonely too." And somewhere in the back of her mind, the caged Santana only Brittany ever saw that she bottled up around anyone but her broke loose, and Santana wondered idly in what was left of her reason what had happened to the capable, strong, independent Brittany the girl she'd loved had grown - almost danced - into. "I miss you, too, and I understand, I understand."

"I'm so confused by everything," Brittany confessed hoarsely, "I don't understand anything my professors say if it's not in dance, and people look at me like I'm stupid."

"You are _not_ stupid!" Santana's voice rose without her intending it to. "You are so, so smart. You're a genius, Britt. How many times have I told you that?"

"But you lie a lot, Santana," Brittany gulped, and the first tear Santana had been blinking back slipped out. She wiped it away by reflex, the hot, salty betrayer flicked off of her cheek by an angry nail.

"I have never lied to you about your intelligence, Brittany," Santana promised, and she hadn't. "I have never called you stupid, because you're not. I have never outright said I don't love you, because I do. I have never lied to you about things you wouldn't believe no matter how honest I am about them. When it comes to what you've never told yourself, I've always been completely honest. And you're a freaking genius, Britt. You're like Einstein. Everyone thought he was crazy, you know? And they were wrong. And they're wrong about you when they say you're stupid."

"I feel like an idiot because I can't do the homework sometimes, and this was what I'm supposed to be good at," Brittany muttered.

"You're not an idiot."

And then Santana heard the first sob from the other line. "I'm so - I'm so sorry, I never - I never thought it would be so hard, nobody said it would hurt so much to love someone I'm not supposed to."

Santana swallowed. "If it doesn't hurt, you don't love them. And if it doesn't get better, they don't love you." Brittany choked out another hot sob and Santana felt one rising up in her own chest, and she took a deep, cold breath to dispel it, with no success. "It'll get better."

"Can - can we -" Brittany sputtered, "Can we please be girlfriends? I miss you and I want to stop getting looks when I can't say more than just 'my best friend'."

Santana swallowed thickly. "Please wait, Britt," Santana whispered brokenly. "You know I'd love to be, but you… you're not thinking straight, you're sad and you're desperate for anything good right now. Sleep on it, go to class, show them all who's the boss. You know I want to, but I… I don't want to take anything from what you're experiencing when it's good just because I make it better when it's bad."

Brittany's sniffles had become smaller, less loud, all of a sudden, and Santana wondered exactly how far into her words Brittany was reading. "Okay," she replied almost silently, only the slight static of their connection conveying the word in its entirety. "I love you."

"I love you too," Santana swore to her, even if it didn't sound like a promise. "You know I will always love you the most."

Brittany's laugh was short, and bark-like, but it was a laugh, no matter how gruff. "I know."

And then the call ended, and Santana flipped over and stuffed her face into her pillow and screamed.

* * *

"Happy Father's Day, Dad," Santana wished him, when she left her room, her hair brushed, her face clean, her clothes on, a smile adorning her face. "Brittany says to tell you that."

Her father smiled at her and thanked her, and she handed him the snow globe from behind her back, and laughed when he whooped.

* * *

"Happy Father's Day, Dad," Kurt told Burt when he emerged from his room.

"Thanks, kiddo," Burt offered him a smile. "Where's Blaine?"

"He went for a walk," Kurt told him, looking at the clock, masking his anxiety. "He should be back soon. He says this is your Father's Day present." And he handed him the small, meticulously wrapped box that Blaine had pulled out of his bag when Kurt was watching him pull his clothes on so he could go outside for some fresh air. It was small and it was rather flat and it was obviously in some sort of box or it wouldn't be so even and rectangular - but Kurt hadn't focused on that until after Blaine's back, which he'd been staring at for a good five minutes, disappeared out the door and into the dark outside.

Looking out the window when Burt took the gift, he saw the clear blue sky, and though it had seemed like night would never end, it had. He wondered if Blaine had even noticed, or if he would pay attention to where his feet took him.

At the sound of the wrapping paper being ripped, Kurt looked back at the gift, and when from the scraps of its wrappings a plaque became distinguishable, Kurt asked, "What does it say?"

Burt read it and looked up at Kurt and held it up proudly so Kurt could read the words _Burt Hummel: The Most Caring, Understanding, Wise And Determinedly Passionate Man On Earth_.

"Coming from the Most Earnest Man Alive," Burt chuckled, "this is… this is really nice, actually. I think I'll put it on the wall."

Kurt chuckled with him.

* * *

When Rachel appeared on their doorstep with her dads at noon, Carole greeted them enthusiastically, despite how the sky was graying and the clouds were darkening. When Santana and her parents arrived an hour later, they, too, were invited in, and the sky was gray and the first spatters of rain were coming down. And when Blaine finally walked in the front door four hours after that in the middle of a downpour and soaking wet, everyone, gathered in the living room before dinner, turned to him and gaped at the plastic bag in his hand and the gel-less hair on his head (even if it was still plastered to his scalp).

"Blaine," Kurt breathed finally, and he was up faster than anyone could have blinked, sprinting the few yards to get to Blaine. The bag was out of Blaine's hands and discarded quickly to the floor, and Kurt's fingers flitted all over him, tugging at his shirt to loosen its grip on his torso, running his fingers through Blaine's hair to rid it of some of the water. Blaine was shaking and paler than Kurt liked, than anyone liked, and when Kurt barked, "Santana, get a towel, _now_!" she didn't argue.

"Where did you go, bud?" Burt asked, taken aback at the spectacle, but not speechless, like the rest seemed to be. "What happened?"

"I s-saw her," Blaine shivered.

"Saw who?" Rachel piped up, recovering quickly from her silence.

"M-Mom," Blaine answered, and Kurt's breath caught, and he snatched the towel offered from Santana's hand and immediately put it to his head, rubbing at his hair. Blaine didn't even seem to care.

"You saw your mom?" Santana repeated, near-panic in her dark eyes. "How? When? What happened?"

"Let him breathe," Kurt ordered breathlessly, and moved the towels form his had to his shoulders, rubbing it up and down his shaking frame, and hushing softly - not enough to make him stop speaking, but enough to let him know he could.

"I w-went to g-get the t-tie K-Kurt n-n-needed for w-work," Blaine stuttered, his teeth chattering. "The r-red one he w-was t-t-t-talking ab-bout."

"The one for my suit?" Kurt clarified, pausing in his futile drying to look at Blaine's wet eyes. When Blaine nodded jerkily, Kurt whimpered, "Blaine, I told you I didn't mean anything by it, I can use any of my other ties -"

"I g-got it," Blaine told him, almost ashamedly, and Kurt looked at the bag, and then Santana, and when he nodded she swooped down and picked it up and reached her hand inside and pulled out a deep red, silk tie, spotted and soiled by rain.

"Sweetheart," Kurt squeezed out, blinking frequently, squeezing Blaine's shoulders, "We should - we should get you into a hot shower and some warm clothes, alright? We can talk about it after."

"What's going on with his mother?" Rachel's father asked.

"Papa," Rachel warned, shaking her head.

"W-Why not t-tell?!" Blaine shook, and Kurt couldn't tell if it was from being chilled to the bone, coarsing with rage, or trembling with sadness. "She's n-n-not my m-m-m-mom anymore! There are l-legal d-d-documents that s-say so!"

"Blaine, please," Kurt insinuated.

"B, you don't have to tell anyone anything, and we're not going to," Santana told him. "You don't have to tell, alright? Not now, not ever, if you're not ready."

"She w-was at the s-store," Blaine continued, but at that point he was speaking only to Santana, his eyes wide, open, his entire face free of the shackles of silence, begging her to understand, and not just with words. "She s-saw m-me, and she s-s-stopped, and I-I… I j-just stared at h-h-h-h-her and sh-she, she asked how I w-was d-doing, and I - I c-c-couldn't answer her, and I -"

"Blaine," Kurt tried again, not even getting the sound out past the dry and heavy lump in his throat.

Blaine was definitely quivering from a mix of the three things Kurt had thought of, and Kurt's grip around him only tightened as he spoke, as he tried to make Blaine look at him. Santana was staring with rapt, horrified attention, and in the background everyone who didn't understand was pestering Rachel to let them, and she was trying to silence them. "I d-didn't s-s-say anything, and then she r-r-rem-embered th-that she w-wasn't supposed t-t-t-to kn-know me, and she s-said, "Sorry, I th-thought that y-y-you w-were someone else," and she w-walk off and I… I d-don't…"

"Blaine," Kurt mouthed one last time, and this time Blaine looked at him, and Blaine saw, and Blaine dropped his head and said, "I'm so s-sorry about the t-tie, K-Kurt."

"No, no," Kurt tried to say exactly how opposed he was to Blaine feeling like he was being blamed, but all that came out were those two of the same word, and then he repeated himself from earlier, like a parrot, "we should get you into a hot shower and some warm clothes." As an afterthought, he fought back another, thicker lump when he said, "I love it. I'll wear it. The tie."

For the briefest moment, Blaine looked proud of himself, and then his face crumpled and Kurt threw his arms around his boyfriend and fiancé and led him away, and Santana shouted behind them, "I love you, B!" and Rachel joined in with, "Me, too!" And Burt held out his hand for Blaine to take, but he was too far away, and Blaine didn't see because he was curled into Kurt, his heat-stealing body wet and soaking into Kurt's clothes, and Kurt didn't care. Not even when he heard Santana start to tell the others that they couldn't tell them what the deal was until Blaine allowed it, and how Rachel argued that Blaine said why not tell them - and Kurt shut the door behind them and helped Blaine down the stairs.

"Shh, sweetheart," Kurt murmured as warmly as he could into Blaine's matted and ruffled hair, and wished that the heat of words could be real. "It's alright."

Blaine wasn't even crying. Kurt was scared that he was too empty to cry, or trying too hard to not be empty to remember to show how much things hurt, before he shoved the thought forcefully out of his head and led Blaine to the bathroom.

The blur of taking care of Blaine was punctuated with whispered I'm sorrys and reassuring I love yous and the hot steam of the shower and the heaven of warm cloth Kurt helped Blaine into after he dabbed the water from his skin.

Blaine insisted that he'd dry his own ankles and put his socks on first. Kurt wanted to scream when he saw the thin and thick raised lines that decorated his ankle, and not because the cutting horrified him - though it did just a bit, especially since it was Blaine - but because Blaine was still so ashamed of them that he wouldn't let Kurt touch them or see them longer than necessary.

When Blaine was dressed, Kurt kissed him for as long as he could without feeling like he was going to vomit from the fear that Blaine was afraid to kiss him back, and then Kurt just held him, and let the silence and steam in the bathroom linger and settle tauntingly.

* * *

"It's been great seeing you guys," Rachel's father told Kurt warmly, shaking his hand with a firm grip and an even firmer smile. "It's great to know Rachel's got such caring friends taking care of her in New York."

Kurt smiled weakly. "I don't think Rachel's the one that needs taking care of, sir."

The girl in question stood by the car, her suitcase in her hand, her phone in the other and held to her ear, saying goodbye to Finn over the phone, though she hadn't actually seen him in person the entire time they'd been down to visit. Finn was actually maintaining fairly good grades in college - it wasn't as surprising as it was to be expected for Rachel, though the opposite could be said of his declining to meet up with them. He had finals, he explained, and he couldn't miss them, not even for Rachel. (That hadn't blown over well, but like always, she'd forgiven him.)

Next to her was Santana. Her parents had already gone home, but she was leaning against the door regardless, her eyes glued to Blaine and her arms crossed over her chest. Her hair was pulled back tightly into a french braid, a style he'd not seen her wear before and one that worked, especially with the few short, loose tendrils of hair that had escaped the hairdo curling around her face.

The boy she was watching was talking to Burt quietly by the side of the house, just barely on the cement driveway. His hair was gelled and his clothes were normal and the smile on his face was as sunny as his yellow bowtie - and it was such a stark contrast from the boy who had told him in a monotone what had happened at the store that Kurt was even more frightened than he had been at the monotone.

Carole had said her goodbyes before she left for work that morning, and Santana's parents had said goodbye when they dropped her off. Rachel's parents were doing the same thing - though nobody really got a chance to say goodbye (or to pester/question) Blaine, because Burt was somewhat hogging him to himself.

"You take care of her anyway, alright?" Hiram instructed, and beside him LeRoy nodded his agreement.

"And take care of him, too." LeRoy spoke up and twitched his head in Blaine's direction.

"Of course," Kurt said.

* * *

Kurt glanced back over at Blaine, whose head was dipped into resting on his chest, leaned back in the airplane seat as far as he was allowed to. The florescent cabin lighting made the circles under his eyes look like bruises all around them, and the changing and dimming light from outside the few open windows was enough to cast a sharp shadow over his features. He looked haunted.

_"She was there before I was," Blaine nearly groaned the words out, but they were flat. "I walked into the store and after a minute I saw her come from the back. When she saw me she froze and her eyes got wide." Blaine swallowed thickly; Kurt almost believed that it was repressed emotion, but his eyes were blank, staring unseeingly up at the ceiling above them, the sixth wall that kept them down. "She looked sad, I think. Maybe not. I just stared at her. And then she asked me how I was doing. Her voice… I'm glad you didn't hear it. I don't know if it was touching or sickening." Blaine's eyes closed. Kurt wasn't reassured by the gesture, no matter how close Blaine let him get beneath the covers. "And then she blinked and said she thought I was someone else, and she walked away really quickly, and I went and bought your tie and started walking home."_

_Kurt's hand drew closer hesitantly, unsure if he should touch Blaine or simply stay next to him. "No hello, no goodbye, no I'm sorry?" he asked, his voice barely above a wisp of released air._

_"Nothing," Blaine confirmed, his tone unchanged._

_Kurt's hand lingered just above Blaine's arm in a horrible mental lingo before Kurt let it rest on his skin. He was as warm as always, maybe a little warmer because of the shower, the cold of the rain gone and the heat of memories controlling him. Blaine opened his eyes again, but didn't look at Kurt. Kurt was glad. If Blaine looked at him with the same emptiness he was using to stare at the ceiling, he'd rather be invisible. "Can I…" Kurt trailed off._

_"Of course," Blaine responded, and that was the only time all night he showed any emotion and his eyes weren't glazed - and Kurt was so shocked by it he couldn't even pin what emotion Blaine said it with._

Kurt preferred Blaine sleeping curled in his arms to him sleeping alone in an airline seat, no matter how like dead he was either time.

* * *

"Home sweet home," Santana announced, opening the door to their apartment. "I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that you want some privacy so you can collapse on your own bed?"

Blaine nodded wordlessly, and Santana set her bag down by unceremoniously dumping it on the floor. She tossed the keys onto the sofa and laid a hand delicately on his shoulder. He raised his gaze to meet hers and she fought the urge to flinch away. They were his eyes, but his thoughts weren't behind them. Nothing seemed to be behind them.

"I love you, B," Santana reminded him, for the third time in three days, and a flicker of that old gold spun back into his sight.

"Love you too, San," Blaine murmured.

Santana waited a moment longer to see if there was anything else that would appear in him, but sighed when it became apparent nothing would, and dropped her hand and disappeared behind the curtain to go to her own bed.

Blaine waited, standing right there, for an immeasurable amount of time, until he heard the first soft snore pierce through the stiff silence, and then he moved.

He placed his bag soundlessly on the couch and ghosted past, walking as if he were a cloud, gliding over the broken glass and not bothering to stop when others would. He floated right to the bathroom, and that was when he stopped, and he became twice as jagged as anyone else could be. And he moved as such, he previously fluid actions dragged down by the glass he'd skimmed over before cutting into him.

And the cold of the doorknob was gone in a moment, and the door was clicking closed behind him softly, and he flipped on the light switch, his hand steady; he didn't blink when the light changed - he saw, but his eyes had stopped seeing again.

He'd gotten rid of the last one he'd used at Kurt's request and because he didn't think he'd be needing it anymore, but he knelt slowly and slid into a sitting position, and leaned forward and carefully, noiselessly, drew out the bottom left drawer. Inside, he looked at his razor. He'd forgotten to bring it to Ohio, but they'd only been there for two days - if Santana asked tomorrow, he could just saw he'd dropped it…

He pulled one of the spare blades that were interchangeable with the razor itself out of its bag. Not one of the big ones. Just big enough to do the job.

Yes, he'd dropped it. He'd gotten it out to shave before bed like normal, but he'd dropped it…

He put the blade down by his still-clad foot and used his hands to almost mindlessly roll the ends of his pants up on either side.

He'd dropped it because he was tired and it was late…

And he grabbed his shoes and jerked them off, and pushed his socks down so they pooled in the middle of his feet; His heels pressed against the frigid tile floor, and the prickles of chilled granite it set into his skin were welcome.

He was tired and it was late and he just decided not to…

His fingers nimbly picked up the blade as if it were a pencil; firm, but not too harsh - and it drew on the skin of his ankle. At the first feelings of the steel breaking the barrier that held everything in, he sucked in a breath he was suddenly scared of Santana overhearing.

Just decided not to and went back to bed…

And he laughed at his racing pulse when he realized it was racing, and he laughed at his fear when he realized it was flitting through his features, and he laughed at his blood when it dripped to the end of the thin, clear line and pooled and then spilled over and made another line tracing the contours of his foot before it fell in a red blot against the white floor.

Went back to bed and feel asleep…

He pulled the steel over his skin again, closer to the top of his foot than normal, deeper than he had in a while, and when several different drops formed along the line, he knew it was unevenly done, and he laughed at how it bothered him.

Feel asleep and had a dream…

And when he laughed, he did so silently, and let it shake him, and let it rip through him, and let it go through him in waves, because he was bleeding out all the pure, unfeeling tension that had shoved his emotions out, and the cuts let it back in, let in the pain of the cuts, let in the fear and horror and agony and delight and relief and air and peace that he'd been deprived of.

Had a dream of crimson water filling a bathtub…

And the mixing, swirling, vastly open amount of feeling he'd cut into himself plopped on the floor, and ran through his cleansed veins, and with each breath he marveled in the texture of the air, of the smoothness of the bathtub he leaned against, of the wood of the bathroom cabinet, of the lined, glinting steel.

And he was dipping his toes into it and it was warm and thick…

He reached back into the drawer and pulled out the red washcloth he'd kept since he'd first cut, and he felt every tiny movement of standing up, and avoiding stepping in his own continuous blood, and turning on the sink, and dampening the washcloth, and then when the water sept through and hit his finger the silent shakes of laughter became shakes of sobs he couldn't bear to suppress or speak.

Warm and thick, and it was a nightmare…

Blaine bent back down and began scrubbing at the floor. The blood had only been there for a minute or two, and rubbing it off wasn't anywhere near as difficult as what he'd dealt with in the past, and the white tiles were spotless, and what he ended up having to wash the most was his ankle and his socks, and his face, because there were more dried tears on it.

It was a nightmare, and he was alone…

He kept the washcloth pressed to his ankle for too long a time - long enough for him to memorize and appreciate every aspect of the bathroom and every tiny detail he'd overlooked in his memories, and for him to be confused, and miserable, and gleeful, and free, all at the same time as he was caged by steel - not even bars of it, but the blade he wiped off gingerly and put back in its bag.

He was alone in his head with his horrible, fantastical, twisted unrealities, and it was terrifying.

And then he left the bathroom and went to his bed and he didn't bother getting into pajamas before he _felt_ the cool and lonely sheets and he _felt_ the unused and welcoming pillow and he _felt_ the tight, caring grip of a dreamless sleep.

* * *

Santana might have expected to wake up to a silent apartment. Maybe Blaine might have gone on a walk to clear his head; maybe he would have still been sleeping; maybe he might have just been staring blankly at his wall. Whatever she might have expected waking up to, it certainly wasn't whistling.

It took her a few moments before she'd blinked enough sleep out of her eyes to recognize the sound. It was a clear whistle, high and trilling, a tune she'd not heard of that sounded like it had been made up on the spot. The blankets around her were warm and inviting and the sky outside her window was softly lit enough to be a gentle awakening - and it was lit, lit brightly, and it matched the cheeriness the whistling exhibited.

Unless someone had either broken into their apartment or Kurt or Rachel or both had visited and were bustling around in the kitchen, Blaine was whistling.

She paused for a moment to consider it and decided it was almost more likely that they'd been broken into than it was that Blaine was whistling.

Regardless, she pulled the covers off of herself lazily and swung her legs over the side of the bed, sitting up slowly and running her fingers through her mess of hair before she stood up. She arched her back and stretched, letting a post-sleep yawn float past her lips, and then she made her way to the kitchen; and Blaine was indeed whistling.

"Morning," he greeted, and Santana looked at the sausage he was slicing and putting on a sheet. "I'm making breakfast, are sausage and egg sandwiches alright?"

Just last night he'd been completely devoid of everything he was showing her now. It was as if he'd been slowly sinking into an apathetic state he'd been caught in the night prior, and Santana hadn't known how to help him. But he was smiling at her now easily and whistling softly, waiting for an answer, and the eyes that she'd seen so listless not even twelve hours before now glistened with life.

If she hadn't been so relieved to see him cured of his languid expression, she'd have been worried about what cured him.

"Yeah, they're fine," she answered. "Are you okay?"

Blaine raised his eyebrow and turned to her, pausing with his knife above the sausage. "Yeah, I'm fine."

He didn't ask why, and when he heightened his smile and turned back to the sausage, it was clear he understood why she was asking.

"Do you…" Santana cleared her throat. "Do you need any help with that?"

"No, I've got it," Blaine assured her. "You can get ready for the day, I'll keep it warm for you."

Santana used only a moment to decide before she nodded and turned her back on her friend to head towards her room once more.

* * *

If Santana hadn't been quite so busy working extra shifts at the bar to make up for her vacation and making sure Blaine wasn't… well, in her head she always just said "dead", but she had a feeling that if she said that out loud Blaine might not react well… she might have noticed the pattern.

The day after Blaine's good spirits returned, he seemed a bit down again, and even his coffee date with Kurt didn't cheer him up enough to be really joyful.

The next day, when the group went out and they met up with Adam, returning home had brought the return of on-edge Blaine - the one who didn't actually look like he felt like he was on the edge of a cliff, but looked like it.

And the day following that he was happy again.

The pattern repeated itself with slight variations in timing for two weeks before she began to notice that it was, in fact, a pattern. By the time she came to the realization, Blaine was out the door and on his way to class.

* * *

_Right:_  
_Made breakfast for Santana_  
_Cleaned house as a surprise_  
_Gave Kurt a stuffed dog in return for MTD_  
_Helped Kurt pack for moving in_  
_Helped Santana pack for moving out_  
_Gave Rachel 'The Book of Mormon' on DVD_

_Wrong:_  
_Burned Santana's breakfast_  
_Cleaned house without telling her_  
_Misplaced her things while cleaning_  
_Didn't apologize enough_  
_Never apologize enough_  
_Gave Kurt a stuffed dog and copied him_  
_Couldn't think of anything better_  
_Couldn't bring him any closer to trusting me again_  
_Made him lie to be again by saying he loved it_  
_He hated it_  
_Of course he did_  
_Got pushy and made Kurt pack some_  
_Got in the way of packing_  
_Left before we were done because he looked upset_  
_Upset Kurt_  
_Couldn't make myself ask him what was wrong_  
_Because it's me_  
_It's always me_  
_Did the same thing about packing with Santana_  
_Made her snap at me to leave her alone_  
_Didn't realize she wanted me to in the first place_  
_Was oblivious_  
_You're oblivious_  
_And stupid_  
_Stop talking to yourself, you're doing it again_  
_Wouldn't let 'The Book of Mormon' thing go with Rachel_  
_Irritated everyone_  
_I'm so sorry_  
_I'm trying so hard_  
_I really am, I swear, I'm trying_  
_I can't try any harder_  
_Stop crying_  
_STOP TALKING TO YOURSELF_  
_STOP CRYING_  
_STOP IT_  
_Cried_  
_Cut_  
_Laughed_  
_Lived_  
_Stop it, Blaine_  
_Couldn't stop_

* * *

School was something that the majority of people hated. Classwork, teachers, poorly-explained lessons, even more poorly-explained assignments… the list went on and on and got more and more detailed and varied with every student. Those who liked school tended to dislike their homes, and vice versa. There was always that kid who loved school and had a decent home life and those kids with horrible home lives who absolutely loathed school, but the rule is followed by more than half of students worldwide.

Blaine Anderson was one of the few who neither hated school nor liked it. He tolerated it for the sake of appreciation of education and he enjoyed about as many things about it as he suffered through, and his home life had obviously gone to hell, so he always just figured it was the best place for him to be; until he met Kurt, he was right.

But sitting in the last period of the day meant that freedom was close. His eyes and the eyes of everyone else flickered to the clock, the professor, and the notes in from of them several times a minute - because they only had a few left.

Not that Blaine minded his last class of the day. A class devoted to the history of all things Broadway was something he'd always known he'd excel in if such a thing existed. When he found out it did and that he could take it, he'd been ecstatic.

Not as ecstatic as he was towards the end of the day, however. And he was smiling, and happy, and good lord, it felt so damn good to be able to feel the simple joy of everyday things again.

He knew it would only last a day or two (the longest he'd ever gone before he quit was six days, but the effects had worn off after four), but in the meantime he would revel in it, and try not to focus on how the fabric of his sock kept snagging on the fresh scab on his ankle, and how he had to reach down and fix it so it wouldn't tear off and bleed in front of everyone. He wore red socks as a precaution, but he didn't want to take any chances.

Thirty seconds until the period was over, and Mrs. Von Merveldt was known for letting them go directly at the end of the period with a smile and a shout out to whomever did the best on the last assignment. Blaine refrained from tapping his feet, a habit he hadn't had to fight back in weeks.

Kurt's professor always kept them late, so if he had enough time, he could do last night's journal. He hadn't gotten a chance; Santana had made him stay up with her and point out plot holes in random TV shows she flipped to after he got out of the bathroom. He loved doing it with her. He loved her. It was just a lot easier to feel that and to say it after he'd cut. He wondered how clingy he got afterwards as opposed to be detached and spacey. He wondered if it scared anyone.

He remembered that nobody cared and his smile slipped a little, but then he looked back up at the clock.

Five - four - three - two - one -

* * *

"Santana?"

Santana jerked her head up at the familiar voice. A familiar voice, yes, but not in a setting it was typically in. Rachel Berry didn't often come down to Callbacks anymore - when she did, it was only on weekends, and she'd sing a song and leave.

"Hey Twinkle Nose," Santana greeted, shifting her weight to her other leg. "Unless you're ordering something, I'd recommend not sitting at the bar. There are some frat boys who like to show up and hog every stool here and get drunk out of their skulls."

Rachel wrinkled her nose, but sat down anyway. "Ew."

Santana shrugged. "They tip well, so it doesn't matter to me. Why are you here?"

Rachel tucked her hair behind her ear and nodded to herself as if to ascertain she wanted to speak. "It's about Blaine."

"Is he okay?" Santana asked immediately, stopping her movements and staring at the brunette.

"See, that's what I need to talk to you about," Rachel admitted, in a - for her - small voice.

"What happened?" Santana demanded, leaning forward on the counter.

"It's what's _been_ happening," Rachel stressed. "He's… I'm sure you've noticed it. The weird mood swings that aren't like swings so much as slides?" Santana nodded. "Okay, well, I was just - I talked to Sam about what Blaine was like after he and Kurt broke up."

"You did _what_?"

"Relax, I didn't give him any reason to be suspicious," Rachel raised her hands with her palms facing the other girl as if to ward her off.

"You're telling me to relax when we're talking about _this_?" Santana questioned dryly.

"Okay, fine, then hear me out," Rachel changed her wording with a slight huff, but then regained her seriousness. "I was talking to Sam, and he said that after a while, he got really kind of quiet and never said anything of importance, but then one day he got a little better. And then it happened again. And again. And -"

"I get it, Berry, go on."

"Okay, okay. But does that not sound like what he's been doing recently?" She clasped her raised hands together childishly. Santana ignored the gesture.

"What's your point?" Santana asked. "Are he and Kurt fighting or something? I thought they were in a good place -"

"No, they're not fighting," Rachel shook her head. "And I know that Kurt loves him and forgives him and tries to let him know that, but I don't think Blaine is aware of that, and I think it's messing with him."

"So you think he's got emotional baggage?" Santana raised an eyebrow and flipped her hair back over his shoulder. "Rachel, of all people to say that about, Blaine isn't going to surprise any-"

"No, I'm not!" Rachel interrupted angrily. "Santana, honestly, make a connection! What did Blaine start doing a little after he and Kurt broke up that would make me want to talk to Sam?"

Santana blinked.

And then it clicked.

"_Shit_," she swore breathlessly, feeling as if the air had completely dissipated from her lungs, "Oh, shit, shit _shit_. You think he's cutting?"

Rachel flinched back from the word, but answered. "Yes, I -"

"Have you talked to Kurt ab-"

"No, I -"

A huge, booming sound echoed all around the bar, and the amount of screams that went up and people that hit the floor after the bit of roof and ceiling that was hit crumbled inward and slid off the sleek black handgun held by a man standing tall with a mask over his face.

"EVERYBODY PUT YOUR HANDS IN THE AIR!" he bellowed. "HANDS UP!"

When hands obediently shot into the air, Rachel's back turned to Santana so she couldn't see her friend's face, the man turned to Santana and her position by the cash register. The gun lowered and pointed directly at her face.

_Run away run away run away run away get Rachel out of here run away run away…_


	5. Part 5

A huge, booming sound echoed all around the bar, and the amount of screams that went up and people that hit the floor after the bit of roof and ceiling that was hit crumbled inward and slid off the sleek black handgun held by a man standing tall with a mask over his face made them jump.

"EVERYBODY PUT YOUR HANDS IN THE AIR!" he bellowed. "HANDS UP!"

When hands obediently shot into the air, Rachel's back turned to Santana so she couldn't see her friend's face, the man turned to Santana and her position by the cash register. The gun lowered and pointed directly at her face.

_Run away run away run away run away get Rachel out of here run away run away…_

"Gimme all the money in there," he demanded, his voice still loud, but no longer shouting. The air was full of surprised whispers and murmurs, the people in the bar that hadn't gotten down quickly enough the only ones fully silent. Santana was aware of how stoic she was appearing. If Rachel hadn't been directly in the path of the bullet if he were to shoot at herself, she might have been able to move without her hands shaking, too.

She moved obediently. Her fingers tapped into the keypad nimbly, if waveringly, and the register sprung itself open to reveal the several green bills shoved roughly inside.

"Gather it up," he snarled.

She could actually hear the radio playing. That was unusual. The Taylor Swift song it was currently beating out was rather unfit for the situation, but she hardly took it in. She could hear the clock behind her ticking. Usually the place was so noisy she couldn't even hear herself think, let alone hear how the back of Rachel's chair rattled as she shook.

A sudden beeping noise that was familiar went off.

"NOBODY USE THEIR PHONES!" he ordered, and there was a muffled sobbing sound from under a table.

His finger tensed on the trigger.

_Tick._

His arm jerked upward.

_Tock._

"IF I HEAR _ONE_ _WORD_ I SHOOT WHERE I HEAR IT COME FROM!" he threatened. Nobody dared doubt his words; the hole in the roof that showed the darkening sky was proof enough of his capability.

_Tick._

Santana had heard Blaine's recounting of the shooting scare at McKinley. The metronome had sounded horrible enough, with its insistent ticking causing an elevated, terribly suspended pulse - but the clock felt ten times worse than the metronome has sounded, because it was normal, and yet not. Clocks were always there, but she never heard it. Now she couldn't risk turning her back to look, but she could hear it - maybe it wasn't even there. Maybe the seconds being counted was her pulse light and thin pounding against every cell in her body.

_Tock._

"You heard me, get the cash!" The man snapped at her, and for the first time, she actually heard the voice, and she was startled to realize she had heard it before. Placing it, though, was something she was lost on. It sounded nothing like Blaine, but for some reason it triggered an image of him to pop into her head.

_Tick_.

"Get moving!"

She began scooping the money into her palm and onto the counter from the register. The image of Blaine was not one she thought of often. Kind of blurry, not really the most clear memory… maybe she was drunk at the time. But he was close, and his back to her, but she felt how scared he was, and how warm, and flushed, and livid, and it rolled off of him and scared her in turn.

_Tock_.

The coins she scooped out were chilled in her palm, and she shivered, the movement running down her spine, reminding her of the wall. She'd been pressed against the wall… Blaine was protecting her. From someone that he knew from before. That was it. She kept her face cautiously clear of any and all feeling. She'd rather be shot than show she cared about living to whoever the man w-

_Tick_.

It was _him_.

_Tock._

The realization was so monumental that in the second it took to go from that tick to that tock on the clock she knew was behind her she thought of nothing but that hazy, half-drunken, nauseating memory, and how Blaine had begun his entire period of falling then. Right then.

It was _his fault_.

_Tick._

And then his hand was there. Santana jerked her head up with the intention of looking through the holes cut in the mask into his eyes and instead found herself staring straight at the end of his gun.

Remaining stone-faced was entirely impossible at the shock, and covering the next flick of the second hand on that hideous clock, she gasped and let her face fall.

She knew it was a mistake the moment she did, because everything moved so quickly the adrenaline that suddenly burst all throughout her made it all… slow… down…

Her eyes flicked to the mask and the eyes under the holes. At her voice, they'd averted to her, and not the money he was shoveling in a bag. They were the same eyes. Her vision was swimming and in her memory she'd been drunk, and she couldn't even tell what color they were - but they were the same eyes, and they had the same old self-pity in them, but these eyes had been hardened by weeks of that self-pity spreading to his limbs until it overtook them completely. His finger loosened on the tightly-held trigger and the gun sagged a bit so it pointed at her nose, not her eyes.

But Rachel had heard her gasp, and Rachel knew something had happened that had unsettled her enough to gasp, and Rachel was terrified. And she was turning around. Santana couldn't even make herself look straight at her; he hadn't dropped eye contact, and if Santana looked away, she risked loosing the small bit of ground she had on him. But Rachel was turning, was drawing his attention, and if he looked at her, if he pointed that gun at her -

So Santana spoke. "He's not okay."

The moment the first word passed her lip the gun was held back up and she could see that his eyes were brown because they emptied themselves - and that was when she knew she'd had difficulty seeing them clearly not through any fault in her own eyes, but because he'd been near tears, and her words had made them fall.

Rachel's face was thankfully obscured by a bit of Santana's hair that slipped over her ear where it was tucked. Though she felt her breath hitch because she couldn't know if Rachel was alright, if she'd have been able to see Rachel's expression, she wouldn't have been able to throw up the sad and understanding face she made herself wear.

The gun sagged further. Pointing to her mouth.

_Tick_.

All of that had happened in but a second. It felt like it had been years.

Santana could hear people getting restless under the tables, she could hear people who were still standing trying to slide down unnoticed, she could hear how Rachel's bottom lip was trembling, but she refused to pay attention to any of it. The only thing she bothered to pay attention to were his eyes. And he paid attention to hers.

And then Rachel whimpered, "Santana…"

The gun clicked back into place, and Santana just barely had time to see his eyes empty themselves in a way entirely different from how they had before before the gun was away from her face and pointed at Rachel's, and there was no way he could stress that trigger without planning to -

Santana's arm shot out just in time to push Rachel aside so the bullet hit somewhere around her elbow as she was falling and not her head.

Her scream made all the restless people under the tables become veritable statues, and nobody heard the clock say its next

_Tock_.

Santana's hand, still outstretched, found itself curled tightly around the barrel of the gun, and she jerked it so it pointed upward. His wrist went back with it, and when she flung it further that direction, she heard the snap before she heard him yell. She didn't feel the cool, curved surface of the gun until she was using the butt of it to come down on his head, which he lowered when he cried out from his wrist.

He shouted once more, but Rachel wasn't done with her original scream, and when she was, the clock loudly announced its following

_Tick_.

Santana whirled around and threw the gun at the spot by the menu where she knew the clock hung, if for no other reason than to get it to stop -.

It clattered against the bare wall and fell. There was no clock.

It was then that she remembered the band around her wrist wasn't a bracelet, but a watch - and then she didn't care, because she was hoisting herself over the counter, spilling money on the ground on both sides and not giving a damn, and kicking his legs out from under him and then squatting down and picking up Rachel with one flourished movement. She huffed at the sudden weight; she almost gagged when she felt the hot, warm, sticky, wet side of Rachel's arm press against her torso, and Rachel felt it, too, because she screamed again, and for the first time, Santana saw her face.

The light hit the tear stains on Rachel's cheeks the same time Santana heard the faint, welcome, purely symphonic melody of the sirens of a police car waft through the hole in the roof.

_Tock._

* * *

"Blaine? What's this?"

Kurt walked in the door of their apartment to find that Rachel still wasn't home and still wasn't home; but he also stood, aghast but pleasantly so, at the sight he'd walked into. The apartment wasn't only pristine in its cleanliness, something that hadn't happened since before he and Rachel had moved in, but it was decked out in curtains and carpets and flowers and ribbons. On the table there was a table cloth with an embroidered border of gold thread around it, and sitting atop it were two places set with a plate, fork, knife, and a tall wineglass - in between those two places was a cheesecake on a platter and white wine, sitting on either side of a large centerpiece of white calla lilies. And that was just the table. The rest of the apartment looked equally fancy and beautified - but he didn't see Blaine anywhere.

"Ah!" Blaine's voice came from the right, in their bedroom, and Kurt raised his eyebrows - no matter how much is plucked his heartstrings to hear how thick his voice was despite his chipper tone. "You're home early! Okay, hold on, just a second, please, I'll be ready really quickly."

"What _is_ all this?" Kurt asked him, a smile breaking out across his face, and he placed the bag he'd been carrying by his feet. He felt oddly out of place in the setting, dressed casually for the day - but then again, Kurt's "casual" was most people's "semi-formal". Blaine surprising him wasn't all that surprising in and of itself, but lately he'd been off. Better, but still off. This was the kind of thing he'd have tried before. The thought that maybe he was healing somehow made Kurt's smile all the more genuine.

"Don't laugh, alright?" No matter the teasing tone he used, Kurt could hear his all-too-real trepidation, and how much it hurt him to even ask for something so small as not laughing. Kurt's smile slipped a bit, but he brought it back up at Blaine's explanation. "This took hours to plan and I only had a couple of those hours before you got home to put it into action," Blaine called.

"I'm not laughing," Kurt said, and he didn't feel like laughing so much as hugging his boyfriend. "So is this a surprise or something? Did somebody get engaged? Or did Coach Sylvester die? What's the occasion?"

And Blaine appeared, looking more than extremely nervous and fiddling with the buttons on his shirt, his eyes wide and golden and glinting at Kurt in the low light. He wore dark dress pants and a button-up, white, collared, long-sleeved shirt, though his normal shoes were still on his feet. He had a bowtie on, and Kurt smirked to see it - but his eyes were drawn to the mass of curls on Blaine's head, ungelled and thin and drooping all over the place.

"No hair gel?" Kurt cocked his head to the side and stared at the hair, which Blaine instinctively ran his hands through.

Blaine laughed, his voice shaking just the tiniest bit, something Kurt had noticed when he'd been in the other room. "I remember that you said you liked seeing the 'real me' with no product, so… yeah, no hair gel."

"Blaine," Kurt grinned, covering his mouth by habit, no matter how sad it was that the look of terror in Blaine's eyes was at the possibility of not getting Kurt's approval - so Kurt giggled, trying to show him he had it. "What is this? What is it for?"

Blaine spread his arms wide. "For you!" he announced He played his part well, but Kurt could read him even better - it was so fake it was almost plastic, but his concern and reasoning was real, Kurt was sure of it. "For existing as well as you have."

Kurt's giggles grew into snickers. "So… so you're doing this… because I exist?"

"Yep!" Blaine grinned, looking pleased with himself, and it was such a contrast from his usual semi-emotional state of self-hatred that Kurt actually froze in awe before he saw through the exterior and into the boy acting his heart out to seem assured. "Because you exist, and your existence is the most important one in the universe. If you didn't exist, neither would my happiness, so the more I tell you that, the happier we both are." He was trying so hard not to let his voice break…

"Blaine," Kurt said again, not sure where he was going beyond that word.

"Care to join me?" Blaine asked, gesturing to the table.

Kurt had to really fight to keep his smile up when he realized Blaine wasn't actually sure of the answer.

"Why are you doing this?" Kurt pressed, dropping his hand and becoming serious. "Really."

Blaine's face changed so quickly and so drastically Kurt's stomach swooped to his feet. "Is it too much?"

"No, it's wonderful!" Kurt rushed to assure him, walking over quickly, almost jogging, taking long strides until he met his hands and took them in his own. "It's wonderful. But did somebody say something to you, or do something, that prompted this?" If it had…

"Why do you ask?" Blaine digressed, looking at him gently, his face not yet as confident as it had been, and Kurt felt like slapping himself for putting the expression there.

"Because I know you," Kurt said. "Blaine, please tell me." He'd needed to say that for weeks - no, he'd needed an answer. He'd been saying it from the beginning. He'd not yet gotten an answer.

"It's no big deal," Blaine waved it off with a roll of his eyes. "It's noth-"

Kurt's phone rang in his pocket and the sudden sound made them both jump. If Blaine hadn't seem so unsure in the embrace Kurt held him in, he'd have kept holding him. "Ignore it," Kurt told him firmly, but just as he finished, Blaine's phone started ringing in the other room.

It took a split second for both of their faces to drop entirely and they both whispered, "Something happened," and dove for their phones.

* * *

It took exactly thirteen minutes and forty-six seconds between Blaine hanging up the phone and Blaine being in Santana's arms. He counted. He couldn't help it.

* * *

Blaine couldn't even handle the time it took to see Santana. It wasn't as if he completely disregarded Rachel; she was the one who got shot, and he loved her too. In fact, the second question he asked Santana as soon as he could speak again was, "Is Rachel okay?" But the fact of the matter was that Kurt was the one who focused intently on Rachel's behalf with a fair - but not equal - amount of concern set aside for Santana, not Blaine, because Blaine did the opposite.

When he'd gotten the phone call from Santana's phone, she hadn't even been the one who answered when he picked it up and said, "What happened?" Instead, a police officer had explained, and Blaine had bolted out of the room and grabbed a similarly-treated Kurt and made for the street. They wasted a full minute and a half just waiting for a taxi, and the whole time they both grew more and more anxious until eventually when they got into the taxi they all but screamed the directions and paid him during the trip so they wouldn't have to afterward, wasting a good amount of money.

But that hadn't mattered because as soon as he'd seen Santana through the window, with her hair pulled back sloppily and her heels discarded beside her with her head down in the chair with her back to them, he'd been impossible to stop from bursting through the door.

Every single second he couldn't see her, smell her, feel her, every single second since he learned what happened, he'd counted it, because it was another second he hadn't expected. It was a second in which he had been entirely drained of all emotion and feeling during the call but as soon as it ended he was flooded with it. He was feeling and he didn't have to cut for it, and he was terrified as to what that meant.

At first he was pleased. He was pleased that caring for and loving Santana and Rachel to such an extent meant that he didn't have to bleed to feel things; but then he realized that it was only misery and horrible, on-edge tension that he was feeling, and he didn't know if that was a good thing - because it was feeling, no matter what - or a bad thing, because he felt that anyway, just not as strongly. He didn't know if it was a step to "recovering" or if it was a step back.

But when he saw Santana, his emotions were so powerful and so foreign even to him that he had no clue what to do except to run inside and shout her name and hug her when she jumped up at the sound of his voice. He saw her face right before her chin was hooked over his shoulder - he wished he hadn't. If he thought his emotions were overwhelming, he was surprised she hadn't died just from her expression.

But then he was in her arms and she was in his and he squeezed her as tight as he could, and he buried his face in her shoulder, and he clutched onto her as if she were his only rope up from the bottle of a well.

But then, in a shattering moment that nearly killed him, her lips found his ear, and she whispered, "Are you cutting again?"

He jerked back so quickly and so forcefully that he accidentally snapped her head upward and made Kurt jump back in surprise. The first and most prominent thought that plagued him when he met her darker-than-normal eyes was _I was careful_.

He opened his mouth to deny it, to lie, to say something other than the truth. He opened his mouth to be fake. And he succeeded.

He was glad, for a flash of a moment, that he already looked so horrified, because it must have sold the shaky "No, I'm not," that he breathed. But after that gladness dissipated, in its wake was left a horrible pool of guilt, and a sense of worthlessness, and betrayal, especially when Santana actually smiled and started to cry at the same time when he answered. He understood then just how much of a big deal it was to her, even if he didn't know why.

And he didn't. He had no clue. He couldn't comprehend why someone like her would care so deeply about whether or not he bled, though it was obvious she did. And if, in that moment, he hadn't thought about how little it meant to him to actually bleed and the massive amount it meant to bleed out and bleed in like people breathed, he might have had enough emotion left to feel confused.

But he didn't. He felt quiet, and that was never, never good. But he couldn't make it feel bad. Just quiet.

* * *

Kurt was incapable of thinking. His feelings were so absolutely jumbled that his thoughts were lost in them. He'd always associated emotions with colors, and a lot of times people were confused by his ideas for them. There were some that made sense, like red: the color when you kiss someone with tongue, the color of your head when you're making love for the first time, the color when you hear words saying they've done the same with someone else, the color of your hatred for what they've done but your love for them themselves. Red was the main reason why he'd gotten over he and Blaine breaking up.

But there were some nobody had ever understood. How he thought yellow was a sad color, and how he thought of blue as happy. He thought of green as both sickly and healthy all the time, the same way red was hate and love simultaneously, and he found brown warm and cozy. He found gray to be comforting but distancing at the same time, and for moments like the one he was living in, a huddled mass of colors blending and making horrible brown-gray sludge in his head made it impossible to tell what he felt.

"Blaine," he whispered, the hardness of the uncomfortable waiting room chair digging into his back, but his fiance's warm arm easing the slight discomfort into indifference. "Can I ask you something?"

"Of course," Blaine murmured, and Kurt wondered just how broken Blaine felt every time Kurt mindlessly questioned whether or not he could do something to/with him and immediately felt guilty. But Kurt wanted to ask, and a lot of times he held back, simply because it was such an abstract question.

"If you could… um, assign a color to right now, what do you think it would be?"

Blaine's cheek rested on his shoulder, so he couldn't see his face, but he heard how his voice changed when he said, "I'm probably not the best person to answer…"

"Oh…"

"… but probably gray."

"Gray?" Kurt repeated, a bit taken aback. That hadn't been something he'd been considering. Gray seemed too formal for waiting for Rachel to come out. "Why?"

"Because it's like all my feelings are… um, you know."

Kurt turned his head just a bit and kissed the top of his head. "Blending together?" he murmured. "Hard to separate?"

"Sure."

"Blaine," Kurt pressed gently, "Please."

Blaine squeezed his eyes shut; Kurt could just see him do it, and a rope knotted in his stomach of nerves and pity that he'd never talk about. "I was… I was thinking more like they were gone."

Santana turned her head sharply when she heard Blaine and her face was tied up in a way Kurt had never seen it before. It was so loose, so… hanging. As if everything about her sagged and even her shock made her more tired, and she looked like she knew something she really, really didn't want to.

"I wish I was like that," Kurt told Blaine. He'd have given anything to be able to make all his feelings go away.

"No, _please_ don't," Blaine whispered, and it was evident in his voice, in how he shifted, in how his hand in Kurt's tightened that he was begging.

Kurt spared just a moment before saying, "I can't, so I don't think there's a need for concern." Santana's gaze, which had found him, unnerved him, and he averted his eyes to look at his fingers laced with Blaine's.

* * *

"_Rachel_!" Kurt nearly screamed, as soon as she was visible, and the already-crying brunette with a cast around her arm sobbed into the crook of his neck, because he was up faster than Blaine could see his friend.

* * *

It was decided unanimously that they would all stay at Kurt and Rachel's for the night. Their apartment was bigger and they all needed to stay together; after Santana had given her statement to the police and they'd dragged the masked man in handcuffs into the back of a police car again, they'd gone home. They'd had to push through reporters and cameras, and after Rachel had whispered to them all not to be afraid, she'd screamed as loudly as she could.

Everyone had backed off. Several microphones were dropped, and cameras were diverted, and people from inside nearby establishments looked at them and people across the road stopped in their tracks and stared. And then they'd gotten into the cab that had been waiting for them.

Blaine knew that while he was living it he was seeing it, but afterwards he couldn't remember a single damn thing other than how cold he felt when Kurt was holding Rachel and not him, and how horribly selfish it was to feel that way when she'd been shot.

His relief had been enough to cut through the emptiness when she walked out, but it had been quickly diluted to the chill left on him when Kurt's warmth had been taken off of him. And that chill had left goosebumps on his arm that hadn't gone away, even when they got to the apartment.

He opened the door because Rachel couldn't, Kurt wouldn't let go of her, and Santana didn't have her key. Before he let Rachel pass through, however, he hugged as much of her as he could, and he told her softly, "I am so, so sorry that this happened to you, and I wish it was me, not you."

She'd responded with a tearful thank you before she entered with Kurt right behind her and Santana behind him.

The point where Blaine started remembering things was when Santana pulled him aside into the bathroom and pointed at Kurt's razor, lying on the counter. "Tell me," she said, and in her voice was nothing but pure honesty and firmness.

"Tell you?" he asked.

"Please don't lie this time," she said, and he realized she was pleading. "Are you… _are you_?"

"Am I…" he looked at the silver, thin, sharp lines, and then back at her soft, warm, golden face. "Am I cutting?"

She didn't flinch away from the work of blink too many times or anything after he said it; she showed no difference, though she hadn't been able to get the word out herself. "Yes."

Blaine kept his mouth firmly closed.

Not because he had no intention of answering, but because he wasn't sure how to. Should he lie? Could he? She knew he'd been lying before, but Santana… he'd lied to her once and this was monumental to her. If it was that important, if he was that important…

But he couldn't be. He couldn't. Kurt had proved that. He was… he was hurting them all. Brainwashing them into loving him and lying to him and everyone else simply so they'd please him. It was the darkest, sickest kind of manipulation he was capable and aware of, and he did it anyway, because he was scared of how little it would hurt if he didn't.

"Blaine?"

Could he lie? Could he look at her and say that no, he wasn't cutting, that no, he wasn't spending his nights in the bathroom with his blade, forming a union of intimacy no married couple had dared approach? Could he look at her and tell her he wasn't doing exactly what he was doing? Could he do that? Again?

But could he say that he'd already done that to her face?

"Blaine."

"Yes."

The truth was out before he knew it was truth, even, before his thoughts had caught up to his tongue. And this time, Santana had a reaction. She didn't bound forward and catch him in a bone-crushing hug. She didn't reel backwards. She didn't wear a mask of disgust or of pity. But every cell in her body seemed to shake with uncertainty, and Blaine recognized it. She had no idea how to help, and she needed to. Badly.

"Don't say something like 'If you love me, you'll stop'," Blaine instructed, and she nodded, relief flooding her features. "Don't tell me that it's a horrible thing or that I'm better than it. Don't ask to see it, don't call me names. Just don't acknowledge it."

"But if I don't acknowledge it, it's never going to get better," Santana pressed, and her hand reached out and grabbed his by habit. "I - Blaine, I know it's selfish, but after today, I need things to go well, for me, for you, for Rachel, for Kurt, just… for everyone. And I know that can't always happen, so I just need them to get better. Not good, just… better."

"I am getting better," Blaine insisted.

"Hurting yourself isn't getting better," Santana responded.

"Santana -"

"I don't - I can't even imagine how you - I mean, isn't it worse after you -"

"Santana, please," Blaine hissed, "The desire to find a small blade and watch blood run is not something I take pride in, but it's something I need to feel if I'm going to feel anything else."

"I knew it!" Santana exclaimed, and then clamped her hand over her mouth, before whispering, "I knew it. You say you felt like all your feelings were gone earlier, at the hospital. So that's why you… why you…"

"Cut," Blaine finished, marking that that was not the first time she'd been unable to say it to his face. She nodded before moving forward once more.

"Why do you… what do you feel when you… when you do? Is that right?" she phrased it as carefully as she could, and Blaine noticed how his goosebumps were still there and how the hair on his body had risen and how his palms were sweating, but he felt none of it. His body was responded.

And a blade was right there…

But so was Santana.

"You don't want to know," he told her. And before she could say anything else, he added, "And neither does Kurt. Or Rachel. So don't tell them."

"Don't tell them?!" Santana repeated incredulously. "Blaine, they need to -"

"Nobody needs to know!" he growled, and he didn't mean to put so much menace in his voice, but suddenly Santana, of all people, was cowering, and looking at him with something like fear.

The worst part was that he didn't, for one second, consider that it wasn't normal for her and the others. He assumed with a fair level of certainty that they were always afraid, just brave.

"It's my problem, Santana, and it's helping me right now," he continued, and her grasp slackened on his so he dropped it, not holding her if she didn't want to be held. "Let me deal with it, keep out of it, and drag no one else in. Got it?"

"If you think you're going to tell me not to tell your boyfriend and Rachel -"

"Tell them other things," Blaine demanded against the spark of independent, normal Santana that had shown herself, even in this day of guns and shots and slices. "Tell Rachel how much you love her or how much you hope she gets her next role or how proud you are of her. Tell Kurt how much you'd miss him if he weren't here, or how far you think he's come in the years you've known him, or how long you want to keep knowing him. Tell them things about you that you would have never gotten a chance to say that you would have wished you had if you'd been killed today, and don't act like I'm the most important thing right now."

"You are."

"I'm never."

"This is huge, Blaine."

"This is a_ coping mechanism_, Santana, and _you are not helping!_"

Suddenly, from behind him came three rapid knocks. "Guys?" Kurt's voice came muffled through the wood. "You guys are shouting at each other in a bathroom, you know. We can't really hear you, but if you get any louder -"

Santana tried to dart around Blaine, but he grabbed her and pushed her back, and she stumbled.

She stumbled.

And she looked at him in total disbelief that he'd ever touch her like that, and he looked at her with the same disbelief, and then he looked at his hands, and then back at her, and then he said, "Please don't tell them." underneath Kurt's continuing voice that covered his.

Santana just stared at him and stared at him until Kurt's voice died down, and it was only when he offered his hesitant, "Guys?" from the other side did she murmur, "I love you, B."

His response was immediate. "I love you too, San."

And neither of them understood anything, but when Blaine turned around and opened the bathroom door to Kurt's frightened eyes, they both did everything they could to reassure him things were fine.


	6. Part 6

_**TRIGGER WARNING: SELF-HARM**_

"Santana talked to him," Rachel whispered, her voice thick and scratchy. Just hearing herself say the words sent another plethora of shivers rocketing across her bones, and she let Kurt squeeze her again and rub her back once more.

Sitting on the couch with a thin blanket draped over her just enough to hide the horrible cast on her lower arm, Rachel could almost pretend it wasn't there. Except for the fact that its itchy heat made the rest of her feel cold, and contaminated, and dirty, and Kurt's arms were welcoming but constricting, and Santana looking at Rachel like she actually had died was making her retelling the story of what happened that much worse - and Blaine, innocent little Blaine, had his head in his hands and nobody to hold him, because Kurt was busy with her.

Not that he shouldn't have been. She was Rachel Berry and even a traumatic shooting incident wasn't going to kill her obsessive need to be the best and get all the attention she could. She'd accepted it a long time ago; there was nothing inherently wrong with it. She was a perfectionist, so what? Being the best was what made her feel her best, and that made perfect sense and everyone deserved to feel their best. And they also deserved attention. So she maybe wanted a bit more than others thought necessary. Why shouldn't she get it?

And she loved it, she really did. Even if, at the moment, she kept shaking at inopportune moments, and her voice kept breaking, and her torso was too hot but her legs were too cold, and she'd just been shot - at least she was being pampered.

However, Santana needed someone to hold her, too. She'd been through it a lot worse than Rachel had, even if she'd not actually been hit by a bullet. And Blaine obviously needed to be held, but after hearing them fight like they had in the bathroom (Rachel wished she hadn't soundproofed it, no matter how much her singing irritated Kurt when she was in the shower. The walls were thin, but they were soundproof, which made for being able to hear the really loud things but being incapable of discerning what they were through the muffles) she doubted that either of them would hold the other.

She wasn't sure how Blaine had gone from shouting to completely calm and supportive in just a matter of seconds, but he had, and not long after that he'd inquired quietly as to what happened. Santana had already given her statement to the police, so none of them were surprised when she suggested Rachel go first. Personally, Rachel didn't mind. It was nice to have Santana hand her over the spotlight, but she couldn't shake the feeling that she really ought to let them know just how much she loved them.

Because she appreciated herself enough to put other appreciations aside did not being she didn't have other appreciations. And the three people sitting in the room around her were her three biggest.

"She talked to him after she gasped," she repeated herself and added, and Blaine raised his head just enough to glance at Santana, and then he dropped it again when she didn't meet his eyes. "She said something, but I couldn't… I didn't hear. My ears were ringing and I was listening to see if she screamed, and I wasn't ready to hear her talk like she normally would."

"It's not your fault," Kurt whispered, his hands still massaging her.

Rachel shook her head, but didn't contradict him. "She didn't talk for long, and he was just - he was pointing his gun right at her face, and she looked… she looked sad, and like she understood him, and she didn't look at me, and I got so scared and I said - I said her name, and…" Rachel shivered again, and let herself be shushed by Kurt's comforting nothings in her ear as his hands kneaded the stress from her back.

But Rachel's voice had caught, and her eyes had filled, and she choked on her next words for long enough that Santana said, "When he heard her, he pointed the gun at her. I shoved her out of the way. Um, I… I tried."

Rachel looked up at Santana and saw what she hadn't earlier; she saw the fear and the horrible, gut-twisting, nauseating unnerved feeling she'd experienced already. And though she couldn't have been more grateful for Santana's hands having shoved her, Santana looked plagued by the fact that she hadn't done so soon enough.

"She did," Rachel confirmed. "He pointed the gun at me, and she pushed me out of the way. She saved my life."

Rachel was good at crying. She always had been. When she was acting, she made sure to pull the right muscles, to leave her face open. When she wasn't, her face pulled in a way that looked like she'd just taken a full bite of a lemon. Her face crumpled, and she blinked quickly, and her already-smeared makeup smeared again when she cried.

And she wasn't alone. Santana sat back in her chair and wiped at the corners of her eyes and said, trying to be calm, "Come on, I just didn't want to have to clean up the mess and listen to Porcelain mope forever."

Rachel laughed and it was real, but only because she knew Santana was saying the exact opposite.

"Then she grabbed the gun -" and Rachel couldn't help but mime it, because she knew her words wouldn't suffice, and when she saw her cast she bit back a heavy sigh. "She bent it back, and she snapped his wrist. Then she took it from him and hit him over the head with it. He yelled." She shuddered.

"It's okay," Rachel was reminded by Kurt, and she looked at Blaine to see how he reacted; when Kurt told her, "You're safe now," Blaine shook his head and dropped it lower. Rachel was the only one who saw.

Santana's version of the story was remarkably similar to Rachel's, something she noted while she was telling it. However, the entire time she was talking, she had a decision to make, and not one that was easy; behind and underneath the words she borrowed a lot from Rachel, she couldn't decide whether or not to lie about what she'd said and who she'd said it to.

But then suddenly she was there. She was at that part, and Rachel was looking at her intently, and Kurt was waiting with his eyebrows raised, and Blaine still had his head in his hands.

She looked at him, and he didn't look back, and she forced herself not to look at his ankles. "Blaine."

His hands fell from his face and he looked at her, waiting, his eyes gray and empty, and his face full of nothingness.

She didn't want to she didn't want to she didn't want to say, "It was him."

"Who?" Blaine asked, and he really was a good actor, and for the sake of Kurt and Rachel he pretended to be struck by the conversation, and whispered the words.

Santana swallowed. "The man, from that night outside the bar. The one that you said did… um, did the - the thing to you back at the Sa-"

"It was him?!" Blaine exclaimed, sitting bolt upright in his chair, and Santana couldn't decide whether the rage that crossed his face was a good thing because she'd made him feel or a bad thing because she'd made him feel _that_.

"It was him," Santana said again.

"Who?" Kurt asked this time. Santana, once more, fought the urge to look at Blaine's ankles - which she had been doing since their "conversation" in the bathroom.

"Just a guy," Blaine answered Kurt, and Santana saw that his anger had vanished, and he smiled at Kurt to reassure him, and Kurt only looked more concerned. "Some guy I used to know that we ran into weeks ago. Not important."

"But it was important," Santana told him earnestly, fighting to get even the slightest ounce of passion out of the things he said again, desperate for it, clinging to it. "He recognized me."

Blaine's smile fell and he turned to her and said, in all seriousness, "How did you know?"

"He was shouting at me," Santana explained, "And when he saw it was me the gun was pointing at, his eyes got all wide and watery and the gun drooped a little. And I said… um, that's something we could discuss later. But he knew it was me."

"Santana…" Rachel called tentatively from the couch. "What did you say?"

Santana looked at each of them in turn. Rachel, who only wanted to know so she could understand the thing that was probably causing her a great deal of pain; Kurt, who wanted to know so he could understand what his boyfriend wouldn't tell him; and Blaine, who didn't want the others to know anything because he was so ashamed he didn't understand that they'd still love him anyway. And all of that was apparent on their faces, so blatantly obvious, that Santana told them, "I said "He's not okay" and he started crying."

"He's not okay?" Kurt repeated, "What did that mean? What _does_ that mean?"

"It's nothing, I just - Rachel had just come to talk to me about it and -"

"Santana!" Rachel warned.

"She did?" Blaine inquired nervously.

"About what?" Kurt added, growing more demanding by the moment. "None of you are explaining anything to me."

"I just thought because of their past maybe if I said it he'd feel guilty -"

"Their past? What past? What happened?! Blaine -"

"It's not a big deal, Kurt -"

"We're talking about someone who just shot Rachel, this _is_ a big deal!"

"Yeah, what was their past?" Rachel added her voice.

"Stop it, guys," Santana tried to get them to quiet down. "I shouldn't have said anything -"

"WOULD ALL OF YOU _KNOCK IT OFF_?!" Kurt roared, and Rachel squeaked and clamped her free hand over her mouth, and Santana jumped at the unexpected volume, and Blaine froze in place. Kurt's flushed face glared at all of them in their silence, and Rachel's eyes, already red and swollen, flickered between him and the floor; Santana held his gaze evenly when he got to her, refusing to back down; but Blaine couldn't even make himself look at his boyfriend. Kurt visibly wilted when he realized that. "Blaine… sweetheart, what aren't you telling me?"

"No, no, no," Santana cut in, and Kurt looked at her, his jaw set and his eyes blazing that she'd dare. "It's pretty clear he doesn't want to talk about it, so you don't get to make him. On top of that -" she continued loudly, when Kurt opened his mouth to protest, "- you don't get to scream at him and all of us and then call him a petname and be all soft and try to be gentle. That's not cool. It's emotional abuse and -"

"Kurt is not abusing me!" Blaine defended immediately, looking more scandalized at the idea that Kurt was abusive than that he was being abused.

"It's bullying, and bullying is abuse," Santana declared.

"Now, hold on," Rachel argued, "Kurt's not abusing him just because he got angry with everyone in the room for a second and calmed down. By that logic, every time they have a fight and make up it's abuse on both ends." Kurt nodded his agreement fervently.

"Well pushing people to uncomfortable limits isn't healthy, either," Santana pressed on.

"He's doing that to me, too, and I don't even think he knows it!" Kurt exclaimed in frustration.

"I am?"

They all stopped then, and not out of fear or surprise or disbelief, but because Blaine had suddenly become very small - in his mannerisms, in his speech, in his diction, in his words, in his appearance, in his everything. He had shrunken into himself impossibly fast, and Kurt inhaled sharply when he turned to face him - Santana had never seen a face that screamed without sound before that, but Kurt wore it.

"Not - not too badly," Kurt attempted weakly to take back his words. "You're not doing it on purpose and it's not like you're really upsetting me, I -"

"Kurt," Rachel whispered, shaking her head. "You don't - don't say that -"

"I'm not trying to say that I'm unhappy -"

"What if he is?" Santana curtailed him.

"I know he is," Kurt pleaded, "I know he's unhappy, but he's not telling me why, and I have to keep guessing and pretending things are okay -"

"I'm sorry," Blaine would have simply mouthed the words if they'd been any quieter - his head was back in his hands. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry -"

"Okay, everyone, let's calm down," Rachel's shrill, anxiety-riddled voice took charge (or tried to). "It's four in the morning, we've been up all night, bad things happened, but we need to calm down -"

"We're leaving," Santana announced.

"Don't take him!" Kurt's voice rose again, in pitch and in volume, and Blaine's fingers rubbed at his temples.

"Don't make him so uncomfortable," Santana snapped.

"Can we please just sleep or something?!" Rachel cried out. "I'm tired, we should sleep."

"I'm not sleeping here," Santana said firmly. "And I don't want Blaine -"

"What does Blaine want?" Rachel exclaimed in exasperation.

"He can have my bed," Kurt offered.

"Stop…"

Nobody heard Blaine say it, because he didn't. He tried. And he failed.

"Are you really going to make him sleep alone in his boyfriend's bed when -"

"But he's not going to want me in it, and he's not sleeping on the couch!" Kurt yelled.

"He's sleeping in his own bed!" Santana shouted back.

"Let him decide!" Rachel screamed, just as loudly.

"Don't put him on the spot like that -"

"He's the one not telling me anything, if he tells me what he wants I -"

"Stop acting like the most important person in the relationship -"

"Clearly I'm not, Santana, I -"

"You are acting like it -"

"Would you two stop and look at him?!"

"I AM NOT! YOU'RE NOT IN THIS RELATIONSHIP SO STOP -!"

"I'M HIS BEST FRIEND AND ROOMMATE, I BET HE TELLS ME MORE THAN -"

"I KNOW FOR A FACT HE'S KEEPING SOMETHING FROM YOU -"

"WHAT?! NO, _I_ JUST FOUND OUT THAT HE'S -"

"_STOP_!"

And they only obeyed because Blaine was the one who had shouted. "Blaine?" Rachel asked gently, and the boy with the scared face looked at her, and then at Santana, and then at Kurt. Santana didn't know what she looked like, or how she sounded, but she was suddenly very grateful Blaine had stopped them when he did, or she'd have told what he didn't want her to. And then it occurred to her that it should be told anyway, and she was angry again.

"I'll stay with Kurt," Blaine said quietly.

"What?" Santana yelped, and Kurt exhaled and brought his hands up to his face to wipe at it, like he did.

Rachel bit her lip. "Are you sure?"

"Yeah," Santana backed her more forcefully, "Are you -"

"I'm staying, Santana," Blaine mumbled decisively, and then took a deep breath and stood, never once making eye contact. "Just give me a few minutes to clean up -"

"B -"

"Don't," he warned her, his voice jagged, and his eyes met hers and they were bottomless, and she got very, very cold.

Blaine, however, wasn't cold. Or warm. Or hurt, or angry, or sad, or anything. And if he was, he couldn't feel it. Again. _Again_. How many times did he have to feel completely and totally barren? He thought he was supposed to be getting better. But it was so difficult to remain apathetic, so hard to look at people he loved and not feel that he loved them enough. It was hard not being enough. Without feelings, what was he? Even more worthless and untrustworthy than he was normally. And he knew that.

Looking at Santana, it was all he knew.

So he turned away, maybe so he could know other things, and said, "I'll be out in a few minutes."

He began walking towards the bathroom, but then Rachel's hand was around his wrist, and he paused and looked at her, and raised his eyebrows when he saw her mouth was open.

"Don't do it," she murmured, so quiet that the other two standing like statues couldn't hear.

"Do what?" he murmured back.

She winced. "You know… don't… do it."

It clicked in his mind a moment after she said it, and he ripped his hand away and whirled around to face Santana again. "How did you tell her?"

"Tell her?" Santana's face drained of color. "I didn't -"

"I told you not to not even two hours ago, Santana, and I've been with you the whole time -"

"Tell her what?" Kurt interjected, though he sounded mostly weary.

"That Blaine's -"

"Rachel!" Santana hissed.

Blaine spun back around and bolted to the bathroom as quickly as he could, his ears ringing with the full silence in the room that followed him out of it and only vanished once he'd slammed the door and stuck his hand out for the razor he'd seen in their earlier.

His hand found it faster than he'd planned to, and in the blackness of the room that came with not flicking on the light switch, the blade dug into his palm.

It was sharp and it was deeper than normal, and Blaine gasped and his body jerked back and away from it. _No, no, no no no no no no…_ He hadn't been careful enough. He was always so careful, but he hadn't been, and now he was crying. And it was so fast, so fast he couldn't see, but as the blood pooled over the cut he could feel everything seeping in and it was… _it was too much_. He'd have rather been empty. He needed to be. But this was dealing with it, it was handling it - too much to handle, too strong, it was too much.

Blaine slumped against the wall and clutched his hand and felt every single tiny movement and grain and it was all so sharp and clear and too much and he was so scared and trembling and cold and alone and had nothing to help him and and and and and -

And didn't other people cut because they felt too much? Didn't they cut because they needed to bleed out their emotions instead of let them in?

And so, in desperation, he lurched forward and grabbed the razor again, and a small semblance of relief came with the jarring hurt of the slash accompanying the other one on his palm.

* * *

They'd all called someone immediately. And none of them called their families.

As soon as Blaine had vanished behind the loudly-closed door, Santana had dived for his phone and begun rifling through the contacts. It didn't take long to find the number she wanted - it was towards the beginning of the alphabet, and Blaine kept all contacts strictly under names for some reason and not nicknames.

She called it and held it to her ear, noticing how Kurt and Rachel were in the same position. She turned her back on them and let it ring. It only did so twice before the person on the other end said, "Hey, squirt! Nice timing, I just -"

"Cooper, it's Santana," she cut across. "Listen, I know it's unexpected, but have you noticed anything weird going on with Blaine?"

She remembered Kurt was in the room, so she lowered her voice and walked into Rachel's room, the curtain falling behind her; she barely noticed any of the details, she was so intently focused.

"Hi, Santana," Cooper greeted, slightly perturbed, and she slid into the chair in front of Rachel's desk. "Um, why?"

"I just need to know before I can tell you," Santana continued, rushing the words out without meaning to. "What have you noticed? What has he told you?"

"You tell me," Cooper said. "I know that something's going on, but I just figured he and my parents were fighting again. Is there something else?"

Santana drummed her nails against the desk. "Yes, and I'm not supposed to tell you, because he's been keeping it a secret since his graduation -"

"What's going on?" Cooper demanded.

Santana glanced at the clock on the wall and steeled herself against the reaction she'd receive. "They disowned him."

No response.

"Your parents disowned Blaine and pay him monthly to pretend he's not related to them."

Silence.

"It's why he doesn't need a job to help pay rent."

She could hear him breathing.

"Cooper?"

"Hold on, I'm looking for plane tickets."

* * *

Kurt called Sam.

"Hey, bro!" Sam greeted cheerfully, before the first ring was even done. "What's up? How is everybody?"

"That what I need help with," Kurt confessed. "Blaine's not - he's not telling me anything and it feels like he doesn't trust me but I know he does and maybe he thinks I don't trust him and I know I used to say it all the time that he broke my trust but -"

"Okay, dude, two things. Firstly; oh, come _on_, Kurt! He didn't break your trust, he broke your HEART. Don't even try to tell me that he's not the first person you'd expect to catch you if you tripped."

"I know, I know -"

"Oh, man, don't cry, please," Sam begged plaintively, confusion and early frustration blooming alongside his compassionate tone. "What's going on again? What's happening?"

"I need you to help Blaine," Kurt sniffed, blinking profusely.

* * *

Rachel called Tina.

Tina didn't pick up until the call was almost ended, but she did, after all, pick up, and she answered with, "Hey, Rachel."

"Hi, Tina, I need your help."

* * *

Blaine didn't come out in a couple minutes. He didn't come out in longer. In fact, though their conversations had all dragged on longer than they thought they would, they were all waiting around for him to come out long after they'd all hung up not only their first calls but their calls to their families to say they were alright.

All of them knew something was wrong, but when Kurt stood to go knock on the door, Santana pulled him back down and went to do it herself. Nobody argued with her - they just let her go, waited, and listened.

She rapped her knuckles against the door and called, "Anderson? You've been in there a while, are you alright?" She regretted her choice of words instantly; of course he wasn't alright. She could picture what he was doing behind the material and she was tempted to gag, but didn't.

"Yeah, I…" his voice was muffled, but she could make it out, and hear how it shook. "I could - I need help."

Blaine was asking for help?

It was such a foreign concept that Santana stood in shock for a moment instead of actually jumping into action like she should have. But as soon as it made sense, as soon as the words righted themselves in her head, she twisted the knob and shoved the door open and went to move in -

But jumped back and clasped a hand over her mouth to cut off her scream.

Blaine sat in the middle of the floor, a towel wrapped around his hand, and splotches and small pools of blood dribbling in trails all over the floor and sink and wall leading up to the light switch. He was pale, drained, tear-stained, shaking, and with his free hand trying to scrub away some of the blood that was drying on the tile around him. His hair was even more plastered to his head than normal by his sweat, which made him shine and glow, but in a way that looked anything but healthy - and when he moved his wrapped hand, she saw that the towel by his palm was stained crimson. A bottle of bleach that they kept in the big middle cabinet was sitting beside his cloth, and the air smelled strongly of a mixture of blood, sweat and the cleaning substance. She actually did gag that time, but choked it back down with watery eyes and slipped inside, closing the door and being glad she was quiet and hidden from view by the curtain.

"Blaine," she squeaked, looking at the mess.

"I know, I know," Blaine told her, and his voice wasn't even and dull, nor was it overly emotional - it was the perfect evenness that happened a lot in the middle of his "phases". She didn't want to know how he'd accomplished that - though she already did. "It's my hand, I didn't mean to the first time and it was really deep and it wouldn't stop bleeding, I'm just trying to clean up -"

"The first time?" Santana breathed. "How many times did you - on your hand? Don't you normally -"

"Yes, I normally cut my ankle," Blaine bit at her. "I went to reach for the razor but the lights weren't on and I missed and this happened, and then it got to be - I don't - will you just help me?"

"I'm trying to understand -"

"You don't need to understand, just help!"

She wondered how truly desperate Blaine must be to not only ask for help, but demand it. This was Blaine. The boy who thought he deserved less than nothing, the boy who would push everyone in front of him and refuse to let them fall behind because he thought of himself last and of the least value. Asking for help wasn't in his nature, it just wasn't. And demanding it either meant that he had suddenly overcome the problem they were dealing with at that moment - which clearly hadn't happened - or he knew he was incapable of doing things for himself and needed fixing in order to not hurt those he cared about.

So whatever he'd done would have an effect on all of them, or at least on Kurt, and it wouldn't be good and he didn't want to risk it.

"I can't help if I don't understand," Santana bit back. "How many times did you -"

"Four, okay?" Blaine shot at her, and slumped as soon as the words were out. He'd not once raised his head to look at her, but when he answered her his head dropped and his shoulders slumped and his scrubbing hand paused and in that moment he looked the part of the desolate person he was. "Four."

Santana repressed sucking in a huge breath at the words. "All of them deep?"

"No, only the first," Blaine replied, his voice much quieter, no force behind the words whatsoever. "The other three are on my ankle. Like normal."

"Jesus, Blaine, so all of this is from one cut on your hand?" she pieced together, looking around at the state of things.

"I'm just trying to clean it up -"

"You can't clean all of it up if it keeps bleeding," Santana pointed out, and stepped around the droplets of blood to kneel beside him, taking a deep breath and holding it to keep a lump from rising in her throat and to keep the smell further away for longer. "Let me see."

"What?"

"Let me see your hand," Santana clarified, and raised her own and held it out. "You didn't do this one on purpose, right? So it's no different than showing me a bruise from falling down. Let me see so I can decide if you need stitches."

"Stitches?" Blaine echoed, in a tone that implied he disagreed. He turned his head and looked at her - and he was Blaine. Not "free" Blaine that came after his cutting, not empty Blaine that came beforehand, but Blaine, in Blaine's honesty, and his fear, and she hated that it could only be reached by no less than _four_ cuts. The thought made her almost physically sick.

"Yes, stitches," Santana confirmed. "I don't care if we were just at the hospital, we'll go back for you if we need to. Let me see."

"It's fine -"

"Nothing that looses _this_ amount of blood and is _still bleeding_ is fine," Santana told him. "Hand. Now."

Santana watched Blaine's fingers pull the blood-stained towel away from his palm, and she saw how clogged and full of the thick liquid it was, and then Blaine's hand was resting on hers face-up.

She felt her stomach twist sickeningly at the sight. There was a large, deep gash in the center of his palm, and she could actually see down into it because it was spread so far apart. It was gruesome, and there was still unmistakable tears of red forming at the edges and sliding slowly and thickly over the contours of his hand; There were blood trails that had dried already between his fingers and the entirety of his hand was sticky and warm. Not even six hours earlier Santana had felt the same kind of feeling pressed against her torso from Rachel's arm, and she looked down at the stain on her unchanged shirt that proved it.

So she screamed, "_KURT_!"

"What are you doing?" Blaine cried, attempting to pull back his hand, but Santana laced her fingers through his and grabbed their wrists so they were pressed together.

"Stand up," she ordered him, moving to do so herself. "_KURT_!"

"Stop it!" Blaine begged.

"Not until he comes," Santana said firmly. "_KURT, COME ON_!"

And then someone was knocking loudly. "Are you guys calling for me?" Kurt's voice, shrill with worry and fast with ideas, came through the material.

"YES, GET IN HERE!" Santana responded.

"No!" was the last thing Blaine managed to get out before the door swung open and Kurt's wide, blue, unsuspecting eyes saw the scene.

* * *

Blaine hated hospitals.

It was a hatred he and Kurt shared. Kurt's mother had died in a hospital, in a place that was supposed to bring and preserve and rehabilitate life but instead brought death. Blaine had woken up restrained to his cot after his Sadie Hawkins beating because he'd been thrashing about and causing more damage to himself. In a place that was supposed to bring safety and health and panaceas, he'd found himself tied down and bent out of shape so far it stunted his growth.

Not that he'd ever tell the others that. He'd been a perfectly normal-sized person before he took that beating. He didn't know if that was what had actually caused it or if it was just around that time he stopped growing, but he'd never grown as tall as he could have been.

Hospitals. The word in his head, on his tongue. _Hospitals_. It sounded dirty and tasted vile before he'd even spoken it out loud.

The knob on the door turned. In a room modeled with whites and pastels, the wooden door stood out, and its golden handle even more so. Blaine sat up straighter, prepared himself for the nurse to come back in with Santana. She'd said that she'd bring his roommate back to him when he told her he had one.

But Santana didn't walk through the door. Kurt did. Blaine didn't expect him, but it was so much effort to raise his eyebrows or ask him why he was there when he could simply stare at him and marvel in his tolerance. Honestly, how patient must a person be to deal with someone like him? Kurt must have been practicing being a Saint or something, because Blaine was not the kind of person one could just date without severe irritation.

"Your roommate," the nurse announced gently, smiling with no sincerity before shutting the door behind Kurt's designer clothing.

Blaine looked at Kurt and Kurt looked at him. His hair shone in the artificial lighting, wilder than normal, probably due to the hurriedness they'd been living for the past six and a half hours. The scarf he'd been wearing didn't adorn his neck, the jacket he had one didn't go with the rest of his outfit, but his jeans were still tight and his shirt was still unwrinkled. He looked, for all the world, as if he were a professional that had gotten so far in life he didn't need to try anymore, but for his face.

His eyes were… well, his eyes were Kurt's eyes. There's only so much eyes can tell you. Kurt had more than he could say in his; but he also had more than Blaine could read. He wasn't smiling, but he wasn't frowning, either, though his forehead was wrinkled with concern and concentration.

And then he let go of the small breath he'd been holding and it jarred in the air, and his arm rose and fell again by his side. "Blaine?"

Blaine swallowed. "Yes?"

Kurt nodded at the word - not to affirm anything, just to himself, as if to re-ascertain that he was, indeed, still there. "Are you - are you going to explain?"

"Explain?"

Kurt shifted his weight to his right leg uncomfortably. If Blaine tried shifting his weight, the horrible fabric of the chair would cling to him. "About why you were even going for the razor in the dark?"

Blaine swallowed again, and this time it was harder. "Ah."

Kurt allowed him the three minutes of silence it took him to gather his thoughts without once even shifting his weight back to his left leg. His breathing was even, he was silent - he offered no modifications to what Blaine prepared in his head, because he knew that Blaine needed it.

"I was going to cut," Blaine said, and brought his eyes back up to Kurt's face. It was obvious that Kurt had known that; it was also obvious he wished he could have believed a lie. "I missed and grabbed the blade instead of the handle."

Kurt stared at him for a moment longer, his gaze smoldering in a way it never had before, and then he took a small breath and said, "And did you cut anyway after you hurt your hand?"

Blaine silently noted that while Santana's approach was the ask-him-outright, she never could bring herself to say the name of the act he committed. Kurt was being soft, Kurt was being gentle, drawing it out slowly, and he had no trouble using the word. Blaine nodded.

It was as if every breath Kurt made was marked and it took the place of what would have been the ticking of the clock on the wall had it not been broken. And then he moved across the room, the stillness of the air abruptly disturbed by his walking over to his boyfriend and sitting in the chair beside him, draping his arm over his shoulder without hesitation.

Blaine looked at him, confused, but not unappreciative. For someone to know what he was and what he did and treat him normally regardless… it wasn't something even Santana had done.

"Tell me something you like," Kurt suggested, and he smiled at Blaine. If Blaine hadn't have heard him so many weeks ago - the sound still fresh in his mind - say that stupid "once a cheat, always a cheater" that announced he didn't trust him, he'd have melted into it.

As it was, it was difficult not to. Kurt's arm was heavy, but not in a way that was restraining. More like grounding. Grounding and warm and there, and the touch of his arm around Blaine, however loosely, was a luxury that Blaine had always adored. "I like this," he tried to say, but the sound got stuck in his throat halfway through and he looked down in shame.

But Kurt understood. "You like me talking to you?" he tried to clarify.

Blaine shook his head, but then changed his mind and nodded. "Yes," he answered, "But I meant… um, I meant I like you touching me."

"Mm," Kurt acknowledged, a bit of a purr in the murmur. Blaine looked up, and Kurt was still smiling. It both killed him to know that Kurt had to fake it for him. "I like it too."

Impossible. "Why?"

Kurt cocked his head a bit towards Blaine, and his eyes went to his fingers, which began tracing an odd pattern down his shoulder. "I'm not sure," he said. "Supposedly, the skin near ligaments that are involved in major joints like your elbows and your ankles are the most sensitive to touch, but that's only on the level of your skin." His fingers kept growing lower on Blaine's arm, and he had to lean closer to keep contact. "But areas like this, your shoulder, your arm, there aren't a tone of nerve endings there."

"There's some," Blaine disagrees, because he can definitely feel the lace Kurt's drawing inklessly on his upper arm.

"There are," Kurt agrees, "But not many. There are a ton of nerve endings in places like… your fingertips, for example." Kurt's fingers stopped drawing on Blaine's skin and began drumming rhythmically. "Or the back of your neck." Kurt withdrew his arm from around Blaine, but only to brush the base of Blaine's neck as he did so and rest his fingers on Blaine's collarbone, sending yet another jolt. Blaine shivered at the contact, a pang of feeling resounding through him, and he looked at Kurt in wonder. "It's one of your most erogenous zones." Kurt grinned then, oblivious to how lost in him Blaine was. "It's not even your _most_ erogenous zone. I'm pretty sure I know all of them by now."

"I know you do," Blaine breaths, heat following the pattern Kurt's begun tracing again.

"Mm," Kurt says again, humming now. "But then there are sensory receptors in fingertips, also," he added, his voice lower. "And in lips. Your lips have a lot. It's different from nerve endings, because they only register touch, not how the touch feels. Sensory receptors tell you how it feels, how much you like it or dislike it - how much you need it." Kurt, still leaning in close, his nose brushing against Blaine's with his head turned, whispered, "Like this."

And then he kissed Blaine, and Blaine understood exactly what he meant. But when he tried to push forward into it, to give Kurt more room to seat himself comfortably, Kurt was pulling away, his face crumpling as it stopped touching Blaine's.

"God, I love you," were the next words out of his mouth, and they were so open and shaky and different from how he'd just been speaking that the tears quickly forming in his eyes actually pooled over before he was done speaking.

"Hey," Blaine protested softly, "No, Kurt, no." He reached his hands up to Kurt's face and cupped his cheeks, only barely touching him, but then his thumbs pressed over his cheekbones to wipe away the saltwater that fell so quickly. "I love you too. I love you to impossible ends, alright? And I'm -"

"I don't care," Kurt hiccuped, and when Blaine froze he followed it with a sob. "I _don't_! I _know_ you love me. But you're doing this to yourself, hating yourself, and you're so amazing and you have no idea how amazing you are -"

"No, no, Kurt," Blaine said, "I don't need to hear this -"

Kurt shook his head vehemently and Blaine pulled his hands away. "No," he disagreed, with a firmness that was only reaffirmed by the tremble in it. "Nobody's told you that enough, even if we've tried to. You do need to hear it. You need to hear it every day, all the time, until you can hear it from yourself, too."

Blaine saw Kurt crying and he heard Kurt's words and he felt how Kurt quaked when he laid his hands back on his cheeks - and yet all of that was obscured by the haze of_ he doesn't trust me_ that had permeated his vision.

"I'm fine," he lied.

"You're not," Kurt said.

"I will be."

"That's not what I'm concerned with."

"Yes, you are," Blaine furrowed his brow. "You _are_ concerned about the future, and me, and I don't know why, but you are."

"You don't -" Kurt said the words as if they were something so disgusting that if he were forced to pick it up he'd only pinch it with as little of his nails as he could, but then he choked, and more tears fell that Blaine instinctively reached for. "Because you're worth being concerned about, Blaine," he explained tearfully.

"I'm not," Blaine whispered.

"_LIKE HELL YOU'RE NOT_!"

Both of them jumped sharply at the sudden outburst accompanied by the slamming of the door into the wall as it was flung forcefully open. And there, standing in the doorway, looking nearly apoplectic with worry and anger, stood Cooper Anderson.


	7. Part 7

"Cooper?"

Blaine's question was uttered in total bewilderment, his expression going from disappointed reassurance to total confusion in less time than it took Kurt to jump in his seat and Cooper to stride purposefully into the room.

"Cooper," Kurt swallowed, "You're - hi. What are you -"

"I came for a visit," Cooper answered sharply. "My agent thought it would be a good idea to try some auditions up here because of my musical talent, and Blaine was already here, so I was going to surprise him." He stopped in front of Blaine, livid, fuming, his face red and yet with an air of caring no one but family could possess while totally infuriated. "And then Santana called me. Twice. Once to say that you're no longer legally my brother, and the other to say that you were going to a hospital because you'd cut yourself badly."

"It's not that bad," Kurt rushed to explain, and Cooper looked at him. Kurt tried not to shrivel back from the harsh glare. "The cut was deeper than it was wide, but not by much. It took three stitches, that's all. His hand will be fine."

"I can deal with that," Cooper growled, "but he didn't tell me he got _disowned_?!"

"Cooper?" Blaine asked again, seemingly stuck on that same word, his eyes raking over his brother's features hungrily. Kurt saw his face and recognized it, and a pool of lead seemed to fill his heart.

"And on top of that," Cooper continued, oblivious, "I now hear what is clearly a lack of self-esteem in a hospital room. No family of mine can be connected to me by blood without being one of the most talented people on the planet, I assure you, and it's insulting to think otherwise."

"He's just - he's - um… having… issues," Kurt stammered, his mind blanking on what he could say. "We're trying to help him -"

"Stop talking," Cooper snapped at him. "Bl-"

Kurt reeled back his head. "Excuse me?"

"Cooper," Blaine said once more, but this time it wasn't a question, it was a warning and a greeting at the same time, and he stood abruptly and threw his arms around his brother.

Cooper stood stock-still for a moment, stunned, then wrapped his arms awkwardly - though tightly - around Blaine in return. "Blaine, are -"

"Hello," Blaine cut him off, drawing back suddenly, forcing Cooper to release his hold and let his arms flop unceremoniously to his sides. "Be nice, please."

"Be nice?" Cooper repeated, and it was clear that that was the one thing he didn't expect to hear. "Blaine, you… I - it wasn't very nice not to tell me that I'd lost my favorite brother!"

"Are you mad at me about it?" Blaine reasoned, his face open, persuasive, and Kurt was struck when he recognized it; it was the same face he'd worn when he'd opened the bathroom door after he and Santana had been fighting, and he'd told Kurt everything was alright. He was lying through his teeth; he thought Cooper had every right to be mad. "They're the ones who made it official, and they paid me to keep quiet about having anything to do with them, so -"

"But you told Santana," Cooper pointed out.

Blaine made a small, unimpressed face. "She has a way of drop-kicking the truth out of people."

"And Kurt?" Cooper demanded.

Blaine's face became more menacing and defensive than he probably thought he had a right to be. "Don't make it his fault. I told him, yes, but I made him promise not to tell. It's -"

"You made Santana promise, too."

Blaine sighed. "Yes, but she's Santana. It's different. I'm not dating her."

"So what you're saying is that you forced your boyfriend to lie for you so -"

"No, he did not!" Kurt spoke up again, his tongue getting the better of him. "He asked a favor of me and I complied. And as you've stated numerous times, you're no longer his family. He owes you _nothing_!"

Cooper was selfish. He and everyone else had known that; but selfishness doesn't mean "uncaring for others", it simply means the one in question cares for themself more for the majority of the time. However, with every selfish person comes a weakness, a desire, and it boils down to two options; the first being the unwavering need to be better at everything than everyone else, and the second needing to be in a position of authority over someone, no matter how convoluted. Some had both, but all had at least one. Cooper was almost reliant on his ability to make himself the one in charge in any situation - but Kurt had kicked his legs out from under him with those words and he stilled, unsure of how to continue.

"He is still my family," Blaine told Kurt, his voice much softer, much more desperate than it was with Cooper, and Kurt didn't want to know that it was because he was handling Cooper but letting Kurt handle him. "Not legally, but in much the same way Sam is. I lo-"

"Blood's thicker than water," Cooper cut in, and if he hadn't offered the words with as much uncertainty as anger, Kurt would have been more pissed off than he was as it was.

"First of all, no, that's nowhere near true," Kurt snapped. "Secondly, the full quote is 'The blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb', which means that the bonds we form willingly and with choice and enjoyment are stronger than the ones formed out of necessity and a false sense of being indebted. Having the same blood as someone doesn't make you family. Loving and trusting makes you a family."

"I had no idea that was the full quote," Blaine remarked, almost as if he were in a different, less heated conversation.

"It doesn't matter," Cooper snarled, "Because he does love me and he does trust me and I do the same in return."

"Really?" Blaine seemed shocked, and not because Cooper assumed he loved and trusted him, but because he said he did in return. Kurt's eyes left Blaine's brother to travel to his boyfriend… his fiance. They were supposed to be getting married, supposed to be in love. They hadn't told people because they thought it best to wait until they at least lived together and saw how they fit in a small environment - well, that was what they had said…

But they weren't fitting anymore. Blaine was jagged and sliced and worn down and broken and Kurt was chipped away and his paint was peeling off. They were pretty, painted people, and the world was pretty and painted but when it was jagged like Blaine or chipped like Kurt it was really, really easy to dislodge and send crumbling. Kurt imagined Cooper as the one finger who pressed too hard and sent everything reeling.

"He's not -" Cooper began.

"Stop," Kurt ordered, though he didn't expect Cooper to listen - to his surprise, Cooper complied, and looked at him expectantly. As soon as he was shown that basic decency, he was lost - he had no idea how to continue it. He'd expected to be interrupted. He hadn't been and he was lost. What -

"Excuse me, gentlemen," the nurse said, peeking her head in the door in the midst of the dead silence. "But Mr. Anderson can go home now."

And then Santana was there, and her arms were crossed over her chest, and her heels tapped angrily against the tile, and she said, "Anderson."

* * *

Cooper felt like simply bursting. He'd liked Kurt when they met before, and Blaine always spoke highly of him, but after their breakup Cooper had been incapable of thinking of him as the person that made his brother happy and instead thought of him as the person who needed his brother to make _himself_ happy. He'd heard and heard of the mess Blaine was for weeks after it had happened, and while he'd been disappointed in his little brother for cheating, he'd been more disappointed in Kurt for refusing to admit to their having been a cause or so much as speaking to Blaine until he was almost too far gone to be reached.

Looking at Blaine like he wished he'd never have to, he felt like he was that far gone again, and this time it wasn't Kurt's fault he was almost over the edge.

But Cooper didn't know why.

It was still Blaine in every aspect he saw. Still trying desperately - and for the most part, succeeding at - trying to mask emotions and reasons that no one could have put into words that he assumed nobody would want to try to. And he didn't know what was causing it. He recognized it, of course; he looked like he'd sounded over the phone after the breakup, if only when he thought he was unseen. But the reason behind it was - well, it seemed a lot like it did after the weeks of silence that happened during the middle of Blaine's Junior year. Cooper never got an actual reason out of Blaine for it, but for the longest time after that it had seemed like Blaine was scare that Cooper would ask about something specific that lying about was just too difficult to do.

Cooper had made the mistake of not asking then, and he wasn't about to this time around - something was going on that shouldn't have been. And so he wracked his mind thinking of this and that and the other to ask Blaine about all the way from the hospital room to Blaine and Santana's apartment. In fact, he was so intensely focused on the idea of getting Blaine to admit what was going on that if you asked him what had occurred in the time he spent thinking, he'd have been unable to answer.

But he knew he didn't talk to people. To anyone. And to everyone else, his face was entirely impassive and he remained silent and stoic, a constant, never changing, just walking alongside. The others tried asked him things; when he heard their voice and not their words, he turned and glared at them and let the others silence them. He was robotic - his head was moving so quickly that his outside had no time to catch up.

And then they were outside an apartment door, and Santana was sticking a key in the lock and turning it, and then sliding the door open and letting Blaine lean on her as they entered. And Kurt followed, and Rachel followed, and Cooper's vision suddenly became clear enough to drag him out of his mental fortress.

And just in time, because as soon as Cooper had closed the door behind him, Kurt whirled around and asked, "Why do you feel the need to yell at Blaine for something that's not his fault?"

"Yeah, Cooper," Santana chimed in, her voice a lot more dry than Kurt's - of course, her arm was still around his brother, who looked up at the beginning of the confrontation. "You were a lot more put-together on the phone. If I'd known you'd blow up at Blaine like that I wouldn't have called."

"Mr. Anderson," Rachel interjected, sending somewhat condescending glances to her friends who'd spoken before looking at him, her tone much more polite, "I'm afraid I have to agree. We could hear a bit of your encounter from the waiting room, and from what Kurt's told us on the way home, it doesn't sound like you're being a very good sibling."

Cooper's face grew hot and he looked at Blaine again - Blaine, who was looking at the ground, not saying anything. He turned back to Rachel, opening his mouth to defend himself, but she continued, holding up a pausing finger.

"Now, I'm not one who doesn't appreciate a good, dramatic argument," Rachel told him honestly, "but Blaine is one of my best friends, and being overly cruel to him isn't helping a damn thing, so if you can't control your temper tonight, I'd be glad to escort you back to the apartment Kurt and I share so you don't have to stay near him." The way she said it and the way she looked at him made it clear that it wasn't his proximity she was worried about, it was Blaine's - and he couldn't blame her.

"Rachel, I don't want him anywhere near my room," Kurt said forcibly, more hostile than Cooper thought he had a right to be.

"Now hold on a second," Cooper refuted heatedly, "I'm allowed to be as mad as I want with him. I thought I was visiting my brother, whom I've hardly spoken to in weeks for some undefined reason, and in the taxi on the way over from the airport I get a call from his roommate saying he's not my brother anymore and never told me. Wouldn't that make you really damn furious?"

"Considering my only brother is Finn, not really," Kurt deadpanned.

"Kurt," Rachel scolded automatically, though the corner of her lip twitched up.

"But that doesn't matter, because this isn't about me," Kurt continued, not even acknowledging her. "It's about Blaine and your lack of respect for him -"

"I'M NOT EVEN HIS SIBLING ANYMORE, WHY DO I HAVE TO TREAT HIM LIKE ONE IF HE WON'T DO THE SAME TO ME?!" Cooper roared.

"I am treating you like a brother, Cooper," Blaine murmured, and in the silence that followed Cooper's outburst everyone turned to the smaller man in time to see him slide out of Santana's hold. "It's how I've always treated you."

"No, because you're not acting like I'm family," Cooper rebutted.

"I'm acting the same as I always have," Blaine stressed, looking evenly at Cooper, those eyes flashing dangerously at him though the rest of him expressed fatigue. "I'm sorry for not talking to you much, but I was busy. Things came up."

Cooper threw his hands in the air. "Things that were more important than your supposed 'family'!"

"For God's Sake!" Santana cut in angrily, her words a spitting staccato. "If you say he's not treating you like family and he knows he's not treating you any differently, maybe he never treated you like family to begin with and you didn't realize it because he could still hide behind pronouns like 'my brother'."

Silence followed. Silence reigned.

"Damn, Santana," Rachel mouthed appreciatively. She was the one standing closest to Cooper, and only he heard; and at his hearing, he consequently demanded, "Why would he have not treated me like family before?"

"Because you never acted like it?" Kurt offered dryly.

"I did act like it," Cooper snarled at him. "I just wasn't around much -"

"Because staying at home to take care of him when it was obvious your parents wouldn't is definitely _not_ what a good brother would have done," Santana remarked, the satire stinging as it set in.

"I am a good brother!"

"The correct tense is 'was'," Kurt said, leaning against the counter and cocking his head to the left.

"He still is," Blaine argued weakly.

"But why didn't he tell me?" Cooper nearly pleaded, seeing their hard-set faces and knowing that none of them were believing his angry tirade, even though it was the most honest thing he'd ranted about in quite a while. "If my parents no longer have any authority over him, why not just skip the rules?"

"Because they still have authority, Tweedle Dumber," Santana shot back at him. "They deposit money into his bank account monthly to keep his mouth shut. This is on them, not Blaine. It's not his fault."

"But -"

"Enough," Kurt dictated, "He's obviously beyond tired and -"

"I'm not done," Cooper growled.

And Kurt's face instantly transformed. In just a fraction of a second, it went from impassive to nearly apoplectic with rage, filling with color, and he leaned forward and slammed his fist on the corner of the counter and screamed, "_I DON'T FUCKING CARE_!"

Santana inhaled sharply and whispered an elongated "Daaaaamn," and Blaine reeled back as if slapped and wounded - and Rachel just raised an eyebrow and said, "Language, Kurt," even though Cooper was still trying to process how so much fury could be inside one person - enough to completely break off the corner of the counter top, he noted, as it broke out with a loud crack and fell, clattering, to the floor.

And, truly signaling the end of it, Rachel turned in all seriousness to Cooper and said, "Alright, Cooper, if you'll follow me."

"I'm sorry?" Cooper sputtered.

"Oh, how lovely," Rachel paused and smiled falsely at him before turning over his shoulder and saying, "Blaine, he says he's sorry." And with a flourish, she stuck out her arm, jerked her head back around, and dragged Cooper away. "I'm taking him away now," she called behind them. "Good night!"

"Good night," Blaine's feeble voice called back.

"By now it's Good Morning," Kurt muttered.

"By now it's Good _Riddance_," Santana's joined.

* * *

"Alright," Rachel said, stepping aside to let Cooper enter. "Welcome to the apartment. There's not much to do right now, I'm afraid - but we could break the ice and talk, if you wanted?" she slid the door shut and turned to face him. Though she knew she was appearing confident, she had no idea how to deal with Blaine's older brother, especially in the state he was in - or had been, anyway. He seemed to have calmed down a significant amount since being physically evicted from Blaine's place. "I mean, I know we've met before and all, but we've never truly been on equal terms before now, so…"

Cooper's eyes darted around and observed before he spoke. "What would we talk about?"

"There's a plethora of subjects," Rachel began, slower than she would normally, giving him time to adjust. "We're both insanely talented and devoted to musical theatre, so we could talk about any number of things in that broad category. I'm sure there are literary interests we share, and, if we get desperate, I can break out the bottle of wine I forgot to use on New Year's because Kurt and I were out cold."

"You fell asleep before midnight?" Cooper asked.

Rachel grimaced, but also grinned. "No, we got so drunk we passed out before eleven. It wasn't the best idea ever, but at least we were at Santana and Blaine's."

Cooper nodded, and when he looked back toward her, he was much warmer than she'd seen him all night. "Okay. We could talk."

And that was how, not even fifteen minutes later, they were both sitting cross-legged on the couch, leaning forward and giggling, because damn, nobody ever understood what it was like to _know_ you were born a star and how badly you needed to go after it.

"I know, I know!" Rachel agreed enthusiastically, gesturing wildly with her good arm while Cooper laughed, his head thrown back and his shoulders heaving. Her subconscious congratulated her on being able to loosen him up so well so quickly, but then got quiet when she reminded herself that after all the events of the past half-day, they all needed to wind down. She'd been awake for more than twenty-four hours, she realized, long after the sun had peeked over the top of the skyscrapers. There was probably a reason she felt so giddy and light-headed. She was tired. Really, really tired. And it seemed like Cooper was, too, because he was acting the same way she was; giddy, morals slipping, words coming faster and more hyped than normal. They're both hit the wall at the same time, she supposed. "Nobody gets it! Ugh!"

"Was he at least good after that?" Cooper chortled. "I mean, that's… a pretty big mistake, but -"

"No, he got it, he got it," Rachel assured him, sighing contentedly and then giggling again. "But obviously my star power had stunned him."

"I completely understand," Cooper sympathized. And she noticed, not for the first time, how amazingly hot he was. And though it was cliche and naive of her to choose those words to describe it, he was. He was gorgeous. With that shiny, perfect hair, and those piercing eyes, and that smile that melted hearts. He was hot, and she was human. What was wrong with that? "My own star power has been the downfall of many would-be wannabes before."

"Don't get me started," Rachel added, exasperated, and he laughed again. "You know, when I was four, and in ballet, there was this one girl who thought she was a better dancer than I was."

"Really?" Cooper raised his eyebrows. "Do tell."

Rachel snickered, "She challenged me to a dance-off."

"Did you kill her?"

"I _obliterated_ her!"

Cooper clapped, his laugh ringing out again, and damn, even the laugh was musical. "You know, in L.A., Actor's Workshop is full of people like that."

"Tell me more?" she asked, her tone breathy, leaning forward to catch his words as he made them softer. He mirrored her, his head traveling the few inches towards her it took for her to smell his still-fresh breath.

* * *

"This is really good wine," Cooper remarked, his words somewhat slurred, as he downed his glass again.

"Mm," Rachel agreed, the pleasant tingling washing down her throat. Her subconscious was long gone by then, and the sun was done peaking over the skyscrapers and was shining through the window brightly - which actually made for decent mood lighting, since she'd forgotten to turn on the lights and the curtains were drawn. The room was cast in the pink light from the red fabric being shone through, and it fell on them and warmed them, flushing them more than the alcohol already had. "It is," she confirmed, after she'd finished swallowing. "Don't know why I never opened it before now."

"I have an idea!" Cooper burst out. "Let's dance?"

"I don't know," Rachel pretended to be skeptical, "I'm pretty good, I don't know if you could keep up."

"Oh, we're teasing now?" Cooper said, and shoved himself up off the couch in one fluid bound, setting his glass on the table and holding his had out for her. She took it eagerly, and at the warmth and strength in his grasp she shivered as he pulled her up; she placed her wine glass on the table, too, and being sure to run her hand along her torso as she drew her fingers back. His eyes followed her palm, and he smirked before his eyes met hers again. "Well, Mademoiselle, two can play at that game."

"I've got a bad arm," she reminded him, "so be caref- ah!" She exclaimed and then giggled as he spun her around quickly, and as she fell, her heeled shoes leaning over to the side in her lack of balance (both from the alcohol and her sleep deprivation), his arm wrapped snugly around her waist and caught her, in a near-perfect dip… for drunk people. "You're not bad," she said breathlessly, needing to say something to accompany the contact of just his skin having found the exposed section of her lower back and the ways his eyes smoldered dazedly into hers.

"I don't see you struggling," he returned tauntingly, not releasing his position. His skin was hot, but so was hers, and where it touched her she couldn't tell whether she liked the temperature or his muscles better.

"I told you so," she said smugly, regaining her natural Rachel Berry - almost trademark - cockiness. "Though to be honest, it's hard not being a good dancer when dancing with you."

"Are you saying I spark a little friendly competition?" he said, and at the end of the sentence his lips were at her ear and she repressed shivering again when his breath blew over her lobe. "Or are you saying you like dancing with me?"

"To be held like this, I think anyone would like dancing with you," Rachel told him.

"Is that so?" And then he was bringing her upright again and spinning her once more, and she laughed outright at the fun and exhilaration of it before she was abruptly in the same position, but on the other side. Her injured arm was pressed against his torso, but he held her gentler than he had before, and nothing hurt. "What about like this?"

"I like this too," she whispered as quietly as she could, and when he leaned down to hear what she said she kissed him. It was like when he'd touched her - she couldn't tell who it was, but one of them tasted like the wine, and it was as delicious as before, even if it was clouding every thought she had other than _hot, hot, hot_.

* * *

"Wait, Blaine," Kurt called, as soon as he saw Blaine's figure rise from the couch, where he'd been for hours while Kurt discussed the situation with Santana, "Where are you going?"

Blaine looked at him and the trepidation killed him a little. "I was just going to take a shower and go to bed," he said, as if it were something to be ashamed of.

Kurt rose, and Santana let him, sighing and standing up more quietly than he had and heading towards her room. She spared them a half-hearted "Good night" before disappearing behind the curtain, and Kurt looked at his fiance, and Blaine looked back, and he was tired and his hair was curling and his hand was bandaged and there were bags under his eyes, and he looked vulnerable, and he looked… well, he looked ashamed. And he looked like he was terrified that Kurt would think it was his fault. Knowing that he only looked like that when he was blaming himself, when it was Kurt's fault, killed him just a little more, and he wondered if that was what Blaine had meant when he said his feelings were gone. He'd just been killed too much.

But the guilt was still there, and right beside it was the love that caused it, and it was the same love that made him walk over to Blaine and run his fingers through the curls and ask, his voice low, "Maybe I should join you."

Blaine smiled and Kurt was so glad to see it he didn't see the strain behind it. "If you want to."

"Of course," Kurt assured him, and bent back down to Blaine's height to kiss him. He tasted like sweat and like tears and like Blaine without being cleaned up - and it wasn't what Kurt was used to, but he loved it all the same.

* * *

Kurt kissed the crook of Blaine's shoulder and slid his shirt the rest of the way off so it piled on the floor on top of his own. He wished he could have said that he didn't stop, but he did, because Blaine was shivering. The bathroom was oddly cold, and Kurt knew it was because they'd turned the vent on, but it was needed if they were about to take a hot shower. They couldn't have the mirror getting all steamed up. Kurt's fingers played with the bandaging on Blaine's palm, untying it slowly, so as not to hurt him, but to get it off so he could get his hand clean.

"Kurt," Blaine whispered, his cheek resting on Kurt's shoulder, his face flushed and his hands helping undress his boyfriend. He didn't have much to do; pants had been the first thing both of them had discarded, so he tugged down the elastic waistband of Kurt's underwear and slid them down his thighs. Kurt let the tremor that shot down his back at the contact of Blaine's warm fingers tug his head back, but when Blaine exhaled quickly at the lack of touch, his lips returned and pressed delicately against his boyfriend's neck. "My… my socks."

Kurt withdrew again and looked at Blaine more intensely. "You're fine," he reminded him, his voice barely loud enough to be heard at all.

Blaine looked at him, with his smoke-filled, dark gold eyes, and then averted them, and swallowed - though Kurt heard nothing, only saw how his neck bobbed nervously. His hands were still on Kurt's thighs, and when he closed his eyes and opened his mouth to speak no sound came out.

"Hey, I have an idea," Kurt said, hoping with almost everything that when Blaine looked at him it wouldn't be with so much fear. "I can turn the shower on while you take off your socks, and I won't look if you don't want me to. Alright?"

Blaine nodded, and opened his eyes, and Kurt managed not to sigh with relief at the mirrored expression Blaine held.

But he did pull away from his boyfriend and smile reassuringly before turning his back on him and turning the handle. The water picked up quickly, but it was colder than they liked, so he turned it up, the loud beating of the jet-propelled liquid slamming into the tub walls almost drowning out the tune he heard being sung almost silently behind him, to cover the sound of fabric being stripped from skin.

"Are you - Blaine, are you singing 'Little Lion Man'?"

Blaine looked at Kurt with a mixture of hope and disappointment, but Kurt didn't see it. "Too much?"

Kurt's mouth gaped for a moment before he reclaimed it and said, "No, it's perfect." And he didn't turn around and he didn't hug him and tell him that he was proud, because if that song was the one he was relating to, they had a long way to go before _good_ came around.

So Blaine sang a little - only a little - louder while Kurt clambered in. And when Blaine clambered in after him, and they finally stood and faced each other, Kurt made an obvious display of not looking at his ankles and instead kissing him with his eyes tightly closed. He did so for several reasons; nearly all of them were how panicked Blaine looked when he realized just how bare and open he was.

Blaine kissed him back, but not as strongly. And Kurt was suddenly a bit angry; not at Blaine, not necessarily, but at the fact that every time they'd kissed he'd been the one putting the most effort, the most feeling, into it. He knew it wasn't Blaine's fault, and he knew that he was trying, but Kurt was a tactile person - he yearned for and needed affectionate touches every now and then, and he loved giving them in response, and there had been a time when Blaine did, too, but lately all Kurt had been given was a fraction of what was needed, and a tiny percentage of what Blaine had given him before.

And he felt guilty about being angry, but he was angry, and he was kissing Blaine and dammit, he needed to make Blaine feel something. Blaine should have felt something anyway, he should have, they were engaged, they were going to be married, just weeks ago he'd proposed, and they should have been moving in with each other and living with each other and why was it so hard to feel -

"Stop!" Blaine gasped, and Kurt jerked back because as much as he wished he didn't, he recognized that tone, and he recognized the tears. They were in the shower, so it was difficult to tell which drops of water on Blaine's face had come from his eyes - but those eyes were red, and swollen, and his nose was, too, and he was pressed up against the corner of the shower and his feet were sliding, trying to find traction.

The shock and realization of what he'd been doing sunk into his bones and rocketed through him, and he stepped back and let Blaine stand up. "I'm…" s_o sorry_ ran through his mind a million times, but never reached his tongue. He was utterly speechless; words didn't connect in his head to make phrases, but the complete and total loathing he had for himself had carved its way into each cell in his body. He'd heard Blaine tell him to stop, he must have, because Blaine didn't just yell to stop when he didn't want something - he asked, he tried for attention, he broke away, he pushed back. He'd been telling Kurt 'no' for who knew how long and Kurt hadn't heard because he'd been so selfishly absorbed in making Blaine feel something he'd… oh, god, he'd held him down.

Blaine's feet planted themselves firmly on the tub's floor, but his hands went from trying to simultaneously pull himself upwards and push Kurt away to curled around him.

But Kurt wasn't stronger than Blaine. Kurt had never been. Blaine was the stronger one, the dancer. Why couldn't he have pushed him away if he'd been trying? The remnants of his touch were drizzled over by the streams of hot water running down, but Kurt could still feel where his hand had pushed at Kurt's chest.

And then Kurt remembered Blaine's feet and how they'd been sliding, and he realized that to keep himself from falling he'd been slipping and using the flat, slicked wall to keep himself up - he'd had no strength to spare or freeing himself of Kurt's hold.

"I'm…" Kurt said again, but he had no way, absolutely no way, of conveying the amount of remorse and disgust towards himself that he felt. But he could see Blaine; and no matter how much he hated himself, he'd have never been able to compete with the face of the man looking back at him.

He was shaking. He was shaking, and he was crying, but he didn't seem to notice either of those things - instead, he noticed everything about Kurt, and how Kurt's fingers were clutching at his sides, and his every muscle in his body was tensed, and how he was trying to speak but couldn't. His skin was red; the hot water must have been running for a while. He was almost able to wonder without feeling sick how long Blaine had been struggling. Almost.

"I'm sorry," Blaine gulped.

"You're what?!" Kurt squeaked, appalled. "What?!"

He looked away once more, to his feet, and Kurt followed his gaze before remembering he'd promised not to. "Sorry. I'm sorry."

"What the hell are you sorry for?!" Kurt sputtered. He no longer felt the heat of the water, just the drops sinking into his heated skin. He'd built up an immunity to the temperature - it must have been a long time. A long time spent on only a few thoughts that had no right being conceived in the first place. He was thrown by the time warp from his head to reality. It had only been a couple of seconds; how could it have been minutes? "I'm the one who… the one who… You shouldn't be sorry!"

"I don't know what you want me to say," Blaine mumbled.

"What you feel, Blaine," Kurt felt the anger bubbling back up, and even though he knew it was entirely unreasonable, it was there and it was spoken. "Damn it, you never tell me that. I can't help you if you don't _tell_ me -"

"What do you want me to tell you?" He wasn't asking for the last answer Kurt gave, they both knew that; he was looking for specific words. He wanted to say what Kurt wanted to hear. Or he felt like he needed to and he didn't want to at all. But he wouldn't say that. He wouldn't say he felt that. And though Kurt understood that when he cut he did it because his emotions were gone, now couldn't be one of those times. It just couldn't be. It didn't work. It took days to slink back into the emptiness, at least from the pattern they'd all seen.

"I want you to tell me how you feel!" Kurt repeated himself, frustration boiling over in irritation and adding to the anger. Blaine looked at him and saw the way his nostrils flared and his fingers clenched into fists, and he observed how he shifted his weight to one leg, and he understood. He understood that Kurt didn't trust him and that Kurt didn't believe him, because why else would he be questioning what Blaine had said before? And why else would he have - would he have… done what he'd just done? Why wouldn't he have stopped when Blaine told him to?

Because he needed proof. Blaine didn't have any to offer him. Kurt didn't trust him, and he had no way to make him.

"Can you show nothing?" he demanded furiously. "Why is it so difficult to just tell me what you feel?"

Blaine _felt_ like screaming to the top of the world and its peoples that it was difficult to feel at all, let alone express that feeling - but instead he just said, "Because it's mine. What I feel. It's mine."

"It's supposed to be ours -"

"No." Blaine shook his head. "Never. Some things are. My feelings are not meant for you. They're mine and I'll show them as I see fit."

"But you never show them at all! Do you just not feel?!"

"I'm working on it," Blaine swore to him, and he wondered how flimsy the oath he'd made sounded to Kurt's ears. "I'm working on it."

"You shouldn't have to be," Kurt growled angrily, and the tears that stung Blaine's eyes blurred his vision again and spilled over once more. "You're an adult now, expressing things, feeling things, it's not all going to lay itself out in front of you for others to see. You're going to have to say it sometimes."

"I know," Blaine whispered.

Kurt groaned. "If no one else, I should be the easiest one to tell it to!"

Blaine knew he was right. He should have been. But in reality, he was the most difficult person to express things to, because every time he tried he failed. And failing meant that Kurt had one more reason not to trust him, or forgive him, or do anything to him that Blaine was already doing. Blaine trusted Kurt more than anything, and that entitled forgiveness, especially for what had just happened - even if, for the second time in his life, he felt more violated than anyone should have ever had to.

"I can't," Blaine told him, shaking his head and looking down at his feet for the umpteenth time. "I'm sorry. You said you would… I can't… you promised, and I…"

"Blaine, I know that it's difficult, but can't you at least give me something to start with?!" Kurt's hands rose a bit and Blaine flinched back without meaning to at the movement. Kurt's hands froze in the position they were in and dropped again, and Blaine was too scared of Kurt's face to look at it.

Kurt didn't want to understand why Blaine couldn't look at him, but he did - and so he challenged it. "Blaine, look at me."

Blaine's face rose and his eyes locked on Kurt's neck. His face was almost cautiously blank, as if he were purposely hiding, and Kurt's blood boiled again. "Look _at me_. You owe me that much."

So Blaine steeled himself against the consequences and look at Kurt's face. Kurt couldn't tell what was on it, but it was enough to break the careful, empty barrier Blaine had built up so quickly, and Kurt was reminded of how Blaine had looked looking up at him from his bed with Kurt's phone in his hands when he'd asked who Chandler was.

Kurt didn't want to face that if that was the only thing Blaine felt when he looked at him, so he turned around and shut off the water and said, "Forget it. You don't owe me anything."

"No, I do, I owe you so much!" Blaine pleaded the moment the water stopped assaulting them. His hair flopped wetly into his eyes and he ran his fingers through it, pushing it back. "I owe you everything, I'm sorry, I just don't know… I just don't know how to say it or feel it or anything." He swallowed again when Kurt left the shower and didn't turn back to face him. "I'm sorry, Kurt, I'm trying!"

Kurt shook his head and yanked the towel off its rack, his back still facing Blaine, who was following him, clambering out of the small, wet area after his boyfriend. There was a tiny voice in his head that told him "_Don't go after him right now, you're not okay yet,_" but he ignored it; he wasn't concerned for his own state of well-being, but for Kurt's, and he'd been the one to disrupt it. "Kurt," he called again, reaching out for his boyfriend.

His hand hesitated right before it was to touch, and the voice in his head told him, "_See? You're so bad right now you're scared to touch him._"

So he pulled his hand back and let it drop, and he fell silent - just in time for Kurt to speak up.

"You know, this is exactly why things didn't work out last time," Kurt muttered, seemingly to himself, but obviously to Blaine - and Blaine's jaw dropped in sheer astonishment of what he'd said and what he'd meant. "You don't ever talk to me, and so I give up on trying to talk to you and the next thing you know you're someone else's sex toy -"

That's when it clicked.

"I'm _sorry_?" Blaine said dryly, leaning back, and the contrast that was his current tone to his previous one was so sharp that Kurt turned around, still mindlessly drying himself off, but his eyebrows raised now. "Sex toy?"

Kurt seemed a lot less certain of his word choice when his face was visible. "Yeah. Toys sit around when their players lose interest and let their new players control them." His head cocked to the left, and Blaine, as well as everyone else Kurt had been royally pissed at, knew what that meant. But that didn't matter, because for the first time in a long time, Blaine knew Kurt was wrong, and it wasn't acceptable.

"No," Blaine disagreed, and he reached out and stole the towel from Kurt in one fluid motion, using it to dry himself off instead, right in front of Kurt's disbelieving eyes. "I didn't stop trying to talk to you. I talked to you at every opportunity I had. I called you and left voice messages, which means I talked to you _even when you wouldn't talk to me_. I didn't stop until you made it clear I should."

"By ignoring your call?" Kurt snorted, reaching down and grabbing the underwear he'd discarded only minutes ago, slipping into it and beginning the process of dressing, even if there were still droplets that adorned his cooling skin. He hadn't even noticed the rigidity of the air when he'd left the shower; he'd been too busy being hot-headed.

"Yes!" Blaine snapped, and Kurt paused to look at him with disbelief yet again. He honestly couldn't remember the last time Blaine had fought back to him like he was now, and if he hadn't been so far gone, he'd have seen it as a good thing. "Which means you were right about one thing - you did give up on me. But it _wasn't_ my fault that you stopped talking to me!"

"So instead of trying again, you slept with some guy you met over facebook," Kurt deadpanned, and stared straight at Blaine, no mercy in his face - that was, until Blaine threw the towel into it and started dressing himself, too.

"'Let new players control them'?" Blaine quoted him scathingly as he fumbled to get the towel off his head. "I went over there seeking companionship because you refused to give me any, and it is_ not my fault_ he kept going when I told him to stop!"

"Wait, what?" The towel successfully tossed aside, the anger flushed from Kurt's system as quickly and unexpectedly as it had entered. "He… you told him to stop?"

Blaine glared at Kurt, at the now-gentle expression, at the boy who kept changing his mind. He glared at him and said, "Yeah. I told you to stop, too. Doesn't seem anyone listens to me in that regard."

"I stopped," Kurt refuted quietly, his voice much softer, and Blaine almost shook his head in pity. Kurt didn't trust him and didn't believe him when he was sane enough to think straight, but when he was angry, when he was being hurtful, suddenly he was worth actually listening to. It was sickening. The moment he stopped being average and started being an inconvenience was the moment Kurt had stopped trusting him. And if this wasn't inconvenient, Blaine never wanted to be convenient again.

"Took you long enough," Blaine nearly spat, and Kurt's didn't react, not even when Blaine slid his shirt back over his shoulders and started buttoning it again. "But he didn't stop at all. He kept going, and he told me to stop screaming when I screamed." Through the bitterness, Blaine felt the familiar, twisting sensation fit itself in his gut again. He stopped automatically when the voice in his head told him to. It was louder than before, stronger, and Blaine wondered who it belonged to, him or the person he fought with in his journal. "And afterwards he had the nerve to ask me if I was alright."

Kurt sucked in a breath that Blaine was pretty sure he wasn't meant to hear. "Blaine -"

"Don't you dare," Blaine warned him, "don't you dare."

"You promised me you told me everything ab-"

"But I'm just a 'sex toy', remember? And toys don't make promises, let alone keep them."

"But this is -"

"It takes a player for a toy to do anything, Kurt. Toys sit around when their players lose interest, right? And then they let the new player control them? Isn't that what you just said?"

"I didn't -"

Blaine slammed his fist against the wall with so much force the booming sound echoed around their apartment and the wall dented beneath his fist. "TOYS BREAK WHEN THEIR PLAYERS BREAK THEM!"

"YOU'RE NOT BROKEN!" Kurt bellowed back, curling his own hands into fists.

"_LOOK AT ME!_" Blaine all but screamed, "_LOOK AT ME! LOOK AT THE SCARS ON MY ANKLES, LOOK AT THE SCARS IN MY HEAD!_"

"_BOYS_!" Santana pounded on the door without warning and both of them jumped. Blaine jumped backwards and his foot caught on Kurt's shirt, still on the ground, and he stumbled, regaining his footing by clutching the sink's counter. Kurt jumped without actually leaving the ground, just a jolt flying through him as he whipped his head to face the door that swung open just a moment later. To both of their surprise, Santana didn't look nearly as livid as she'd sounded, but more anxious than anything else. "What the hell is going on?!" she demanded, looking between them, her gaze first settling fleetingly on Kurt, disapproving, and then on Blaine worriedly. "I thought you were taking a shower and going to bed!?"

"I am going to bed," Blaine said stiffly, speaking to Santana but looking at Kurt, who turned to him in bewilderment and regret when he voiced the words. "Kurt's going to the couch _if_ he's still sleeping here."

"Blaine!"

"Whoa now, Hobbit," Santana held up her hands, "He can't really go back to his place with Shnoz-Berry there and your older, hotter, stupider not-still-brother taking his bed, so I don't think he can really leave. And you know our couch is horrible for sleeping on -"

"I don't care, Santana, as long as he's not in my bed."

"Blaine," Kurt said without sound, following Blaine with his eyes as Blaine shoved past Santana and out of the bathroom, leaving his socks on the floor and Santana with her hands - and eyebrows - up. When he actually pushed her, she made a sound akin to the beginning of another rant of hers, but then cut herself off, even though she didn't bring her lips back together.

And then, when he didn't expect her to, she spun on her heel and slapped him across the face.

The sound echoed in the room and Kurt yelped in surprise and pain. "What -?!"

"Wait," Santana murmured, and looked over her shoulder, where Blaine instantly appeared again, his eyes wide and surprised.

"Don't h-" he began, but then, just as immediately and just like Santana, cut himself off, especially when he saw how Kurt's hand covered the mark Santana's had left. And when he met Kurt's eyes, he closed his mouth, and his expression became much harder, and yet much more vulnerable - he was pretending again, and pretending leaves everyone vulnerable. "Don't hit him," he ordered softly, and Kurt looked away when Santana looked at him, because he couldn't meet Blaine's eyes alone, let alone Santana's. "Just… don't hit him."

He was gone again, but Santana was satisfied. "Alright," she said amiably, as if all she'd done was maybe flicked his shoulder lightly. "Just making sure he did still love you."

Kurt didn't respond, so after a second, Santana added reluctantly, "And… you can have my bed."

Kurt looked up, grateful and regretful, but the only thing he saw was her hair disappearing behind the shutting door.

"Blaine," Santana called after him, moving faster than she would have for others, following the sound of him to the living room, where he was picking up his keys. "Where are you going?"

"Out," he answered brusquely, turning his back and heading for the door.

"I don't think so," Santana said, shooting forward like a bullet from a gun and grabbing his arm, swinging him back around to face her abruptly. "You don't just get to shove me and walk out, _idiota_. I -"

"I'm not an idiot," Blaine bristled at the word.

"I didn't know you speak Spanish."

"It's pretty easy to guess what the word means. And it's Italian." He corrected, almost as if he wasn't in the mood for bringing the conversation down to a civil level. "Along with French and German and -"

"Jesus, kid," Santana interrupted, "How do you know so many languages?"

"I studied them?" Blaine still didn't smile. "It's easier to sing a song in its original language than a translated version, and some of my favorite songs were in these languages, so I studied them."

"Alright, fine," Santana allowed, "But you still don't get to walk out, no matter what language you do it in."

"Just let me go for a walk -"

"No," Santana dictated, grabbing his hand instead of his arm and squeezing it softly, not pulling him anywhere, so her intentions were clear. "I overheard some things I'm not letting you go off without talking about first."

Blaine observed her and she observed him. His eyes were flecked with gray and were almost a sludgy brown, and his face had started drying from the tear stains enough for the salt to be barely visible on his cheeks, and his eyes and nose were red. His hair curled wildly around his head, the bits that were still soaking plastered to it, and his face was flushed but the hand she held was pale. He looked like he was dying, not like he was well enough to go out and walk off a fight.

She wondered if he _felt_ like he was dying. She had when she'd heard him shout at Kurt, and not because he was shouting, but because he'd had to resort to it and the things he shouted about.

"Blaine," she started, her voice much quieter, in an attempt to get his weird triangular eyebrows to un-flatten themselves. "I know that it's not the easiest thing in the world, but you said something about that guy not stop-"

"I want to forget it, Santana," Blaine snipped, and tore his hand from hers. "It's not important."

"Well I love you, so _yes_, it _is_!" she asserted, snatching his hand again and watching the playlist of feelings he couldn't identify play across his features. She wondered if that was the problem all along; not that he couldn't feel, but that he couldn't identify or express his feelings, and because of that they didn't seem like they were there, even when it was clear they were.

"Fine, then it's important," Blaine sighed. "But it's still not something I want to talk about."

"You're going to anyway," Santana told him, and when he huffed slightly and turned to the door, she said, "Your ankles."

He paused. "Are you going to tell me to cover them up?"

There was so much more in his voice than in his words, so much that showed just how scared he was that she was going to be ashamed of him showing his scars, so much that showed how scared he was of doing it anyway, so much that showed he wished it wasn't a problem, that Santana physically felt her stomach convulse, and she swallowed bile back and shivered at the grotesque feeling.

"No," she said, "I'm going to ask if you want to or not before you go out."

Even though his back was turned to her, she could read him like a book; the way the vein in his wrist flexed on the hand she still held said he was nervous, and the way his shoulders hunched and stiffened said he was afraid - and the way he wouldn't look at her said he wanted to but didn't want _her_ to see _him_.

He dropped his keys and they fell with a clink to the ground. "Maybe I just won't go out."

"That's fine," she coaxed him, pulling just the smallest bit towards the furniture, and he had to turn and look at her to walk; when he did, she smiled, despite how she wanted to cry when she saw that he was again. "That's fine. You're going to stay and talk to me."

"Will you…"

"Will I what?"

"W-Will you stop when I need you to?"

Santana's smile slipped and she blinked back the sting in her eyes. "Yes, honey, I'll stop when you need me to."

He took a deep, shuddering breath. "Okay."


	8. Part 8

Kurt shouldn't have done it.

He told himself that repeatedly. He could be cold, and he could be cruel, and when he got angry he had a habit of making it the other person's fault, no matter how stupid he knew he was being in the back of his mind. Sometimes he hated himself for it; sometimes it was useful. But Blaine… The moment Blaine started fighting back should have been enough for Kurt to stop.

Kurt should have stopped when Blaine told him to, in the shower. And he shouldn't have gotten angry when Blaine apologized. Blaine internalized everything, and he was a very subtle person when he was at his weakest - it wasn't surprising he'd made it his fault and said he was sorry.

But it was just so _frustrating_! Trying to make someone see themselves through someone else's eyes is impossible, but if Blaine kept looking at himself like he had been, the rest of them would be looking at a corpse. He was so… messed up. Kurt cringed at the term, but that's what he was. Blaine was really messed up. Not that Kurt wasn't.

His hand rose to his slapped cheek again, though it had stopped hurting a while ago.

Kurt was really messed up, too. They all were. Santana was still messed up over Brittany, Kurt was messed up over Blaine, Blaine was messed up over everything because he was convinced everything he did was bad and his fault, and Rachel was messed up over getting someone to love her as much as she loved herself.

Kurt sighed and dropped his hand, absent-mindedly looping his fingers through the bottom drawer's handle, which was the closest to the floor, where Kurt sat cross-legged, afraid to go out.

He really had been stupid. Stupid and cruel and selfish. He just needed Blaine to be able to feel again, because without feeling, they had… well, they had nothing. Their entire relationship was built on feeling. It was built on trust and forgiveness and emotions, and Blaine had somehow pulled out of the last one.

No, Kurt had to remind himself. Blaine didn't pull out. He was forced out. Something had happened to him that made him incapable of feeling, that made him empty, that made him a ghost. But that wasn't true either!

Kurt yanked on the drawer without thinking and it opened smoothly but faster than he expected, banging into his foot and making him curse under his breath.

Everyone said it like that, said he didn't feel, but that wasn't it. He'd been terrified of Kurt and still so utterly brainwashed that he'd thought it was his fault and had apologized for it.

Kurt sucked in a deep breath, and the sound hung in the empty air of the bathroom around him.

But Blaine had fought back. He'd snapped. Kurt has been cruel enough to make someone who thought they were utterly worthless defend themselves. It was supposed to be a good thing when Blaine fought back, it was supposed to mean that he'd found enough confidence to do so, but that wasn't what had happened. Kurt had been so utterly wrong and unfair and horrible to him that he'd realized that nobody, not even the most lowly of human beings like he believed his was, should be force-fed lies and crude names. And Kurt had done that.

Another thing Kurt shouldn't have done: pulled open the bottom drawer.

It took a while before he focused on the contents, but when he did he felt even more sick than he had previously. Because he was looking at razor blades, and an old, familiar journal, and he knew their purpose.

Yet another thing to add to the list that Kurt shouldn't have done: read the journal.

But it was right there! And Blaine hadn't really been made when he'd read it last time. He'd just been mildly disappointed. Granted, he was pretty furious at the moment, but they both had a problem with being unable to actually stay mad at the other for longer than, say, a day or two. And Kurt had kept the secret that he'd read his journal from Blaine for months the first time. Surely it wouldn't be so difficult the second time around to let him cool down for a few days…

He reached in and drew out the journal, and opened it.

It was just like he remembered. The first entry was still there. Still just as intact as it was before. It was old, it was wrinkled, it was stained and ripped and the further back into the pages it went, the less so it became. Until the pages reached the point where the tears and the blood started ruining the paper. You could have organized the phases of Blaine's life by cleanliness just looking at the paper.

The journal was almost full. Kurt felt like flinging it across the room - but that would have defeated the purpose. So he read. And at first, it was like how he'd left off. It was sad, and it was scared, and it was lonely and depreciating and stained - and not just on the paper, but in the words themselves. As much as it broke Kurt's heart, it was something he was used to, no matter how much he shouldn't have been.

It was his Blaine writing this. If Blaine would let him be his anymore.

_Right:_

_Wrong:_  
_Woke up and didn't make the bed_  
_Forgot to make breakfast for Santana_  
_Late to class_  
_Forgot lunch plans with Kurt_  
_You need to stop, Blaine_  
_You're ruining this_  
_STOP_  
_Late to class again  
Bought Santana wrong flowers - she likes tulips, not daisies_  
_Made Santana wait for 3 minutes for me to pick her up after work_  
_Left Santana at home alone to finish packing_  
_By herself_  
_It's better than being near you, Blaine_  
_STOP_  
_Bought Kurt wrong kind of flowers_  
_Lied and said this journal was a different book when Kurt asked_  
_I lied to Kurt_  
_Lied to Kurt_  
_No wonder he doesn't trust me_  
_Remembered that Kurt didn't trust me_  
_Kurt doesn't trust me_  
_Let him lie and say it was okay_  
_Made Kurt lie_  
_You're killing yourself, Blaine_  
_It doesn't matter_  
_You can't die_  
_I'm not living_  
_Stop_  
_STOP_  
_PLEASE_  
_Wasted money on I'm Sorry presents_  
_Cried on Kurt's hair when he fell asleep_  
_Stop using people as pillows, Blaine_  
_Nobody wants your tears_  
_PLEASE STOP_  
_Wrote in journal_  
_Put off cutting because I didn't want to use their razors_  
_Made excuses for not cutting_  
_Not cutting doesn't require an excuse, cutting does_  
_PLEASE!_  
_You're horrible_  
_You're wasting paper_  
_There's only one line left_  
_please help_

Kurt remembered that day. Blaine had forgotten to make Santana her normal breakfast, well-cooked and premeditated, so he made up for it by buying her a box of chocolates on his way to pick her up and was three minutes later than usual as a result. And he had forgotten his lunch plans with Kurt; but his lunch plans with Kurt had consisted of "meet and eat if you can", and Kurt hadn't been bothered by it in the least. He'd known Blaine was busy. And Blaine had bought him flowers to make up for it, and Kurt had thought everything was okay.

He shook his head, both to clear it of the tears that threatened to join Blaine's on the page and out of wistfulness. He hadn't thought everything was okay in a long time, it seemed. Maybe he'd just been awake too long, but it seemed that the last twelve hours he'd been alive had stretched on for years.

Maybe that was just the problem. They'd all been awake too long. Awake and alone and writing in a journal. It definitely wasn't his Blaine that had written that. It was the Blaine that had made and broken promises and who had lied his way in and out of confrontation time and time again… Kurt wished that he could say he'd done otherwise.

He kept reading.

* * *

When Kurt eventually did walk out of the bathroom, the journal safely in its drawer and his face carefully washed of the tear stains, he found that he'd forgotten that it adjoined into Blaine's room and not the living room right away - and he found himself staring at Blaine's back, because he was lying on his bed. "Oh," had crossed his lips before the thought had finished forming in his head, and he stiffened anxiously, unsure of how Blaine would react.

Blaine didn't at first. Kurt stood there in anticipation for what seemed like forever - and was in fact thirty seconds - before Blaine said, "I know you're there, Kurt."

Kurt had inhaled without meaning to when Blaine spoke, and when he spoke next it was while sighing, "Is it too soon to apologize?"

Blaine didn't answer. Instead, he changed the topic.

"Why is everyone so obsessed with last words? Like, what does it matter what words happened to be the last ones out of your mouth? Why don't people focus on HARD words? You know, the ones that, when they pass your lips, take your heart with them while you're still alive, instead of taking your heart and killing you? I'm not interested in what people say last. I'm interested in what they last _meant_. Why is nobody else?"

"Because when you're dying, you know you've got one last chance to say what you mean and mean what you say," Kurt explained gently, looking at him still with his head to the side, his arms hanging limply at his sides, unsure of what to do. "A lot of people are too scared of leaving the world unheard to pass that up."

"I just don't get why they'd wait that long, though," Blaine murmured, looking at his hands. "Why wait until the last minute when you mean things all your life but never took the chance to say them?"

"Because people have a knack for screwing up," Kurt answered. "People have a knack for thinking there's always going to be a tomorrow and really messing up when there's not."

"But what about the people who know tomorrow's not coming, or who hope it doesn't?"

Kurt's fingers twitched. "Those are generally the ones who kill themselves, Blaine. I'd be fairly interested in_those_ last words."

Blaine shrugged. "They wouldn't tell me anything I don't already know."

"Blaine…" Kurt trailed off. Where had this topic come from? Why was he speaking to Kurt so informally? Was he really forgiven that quickly? "You said you're interested in what people mean."

"Yes."

Kurt wished he had trouble seeing the Blaine with his back turned to him as the boy who'd spilled everything to an almost-full, blood-stained book. Kurt wished that the low lighting mixed with the sun from outside didn't cast everything in the room into a haze of dancing dust particles. Kurt wished that he didn't understand, because he wished there was nothing to be understood.

And from that, he asked, "What do you wish?"

Blaine didn't respond. His curls on the pillow didn't budge an inch, but Kurt could see him breathing, and the sheets below him he hadn't bothered to climb into were still rumpled. The blanket was to the side, unused, untouched, cold, in a pile along the side Kurt usually slept on.

Every inch of Blaine screamed of what Kurt had had to read to see. The way his fingertips grazed each other -

_Couldn't stop_

- or the way his shoulders shook, even when he was doing nothing but breathing silently -

_Couldn't stop_

- or the way he covered his ankle with his toes without intending to -

_please help_

- or how only his ear and above rested on the pillow because he was curled into the form he used when he slept on Kurt's chest.

Kurt moved towards him. He took the few long steps it required to get to the bed, and in moving closer he could see more details, how the hair on the back of his neck stood up straight, how his calves flexed because of the unnatural position he'd twisted his feet to cover his scars, how flat his face was when he was unsmiling. He climbed onto the bed, his hand outstretched for Blaine -

And Blaine rolled away and off the bed, out of reach again, as soon as he heard the bedsheets rustle. He landed on his feet and turned back around to face Kurt, and what Kurt had thought to be flatness was actually anger, and buried beneath it a grief Kurt had spent long hours reading over and still couldn't fully understand. "What I wish?" he clarified, though it was clear he didn't want Kurt to speak. "I wish we met in a grocery store. I wish you asked for my number and I wrote it on your arm. I wish we could go on our first date and talk about ourselves and I wish we could've kissed on my front porch without my parents being disgusted and the neighbors throwing eggs at us. I wish that our second date could've been putting on a movie but being too busy watching each other to watch it. I wish I could grow and mature with you instead of falling back into an age I never should have entered and being forever that many steps behind. I wish you could have introduced me to your father over dinner and he'd have shaken my hand and his meeting me wouldn't have been me waking up hungover in your bed. I wish you could've introduced me to your mother, too. I wish I could have been your plus one at Mr. Schue's wedding because he'd never met me because we met in a grocery store. I wish I had your coffee ready for you in the morning. I wish that when I slept next to you I'd sleep because I wanted to and not because I was hurt or drained and even if I snored you'd just find it charming. I wish we could be happy and not feel selfish when we are."

Kurt blinked slowly, slowly, repeatedly, his breaths coming faster as Blaine's words accelerated. "Blaine…"

"I wish the oven would break," he continued, pointing uselessly in the direction of the kitchen, "and you'd have to fix it so it would be delivery pizza and takeout for a week. I wish I'd give you t-shirts with your favorite band on the front. I wish we'd fret about bills and helping Finn through college and I wish those bills came in the mail with the name 'Blaine Hummel' on them. I wish we had nights where we talked for hours about our days and our co-workers, without it feeling really unsteady and like it's about to break, and only because we wanted to hear about those things, because we love each other. I wish we had inside jokes nobody else would understand, not even Rachel, or Santana; or that we had a routine and not this insane jumble of life we've knotted for ourselves."  
Kurt shook his head that was held in his hands against the words. "No…"  
"I wish I had a childhood unmarred by hatred and loss and I wish you did too. I wish I could watch your hair turn gray and not from stress. I wish you could watch mine, too, and that we could be old and wrinkled like we planned to be on our first date when we talked about ourselves, even if we never said it out loud. I wish I wasn't who I am. I wish I didn't have to choose your trust over my health and I wish I didn't just make it sound like it's your fault because it's not, Kurt, it'll never be. I wish…" and for the first time since beginning, Blaine stopped and thought over his words before finishing, "that circumstances were different. I guess that's all I'm saying. I wish circumstances were different."

Yet another thing Kurt never should have done: asked what Blaine wished.

"You see now, don't you? The f-"

"And I wish you would just _leave_!" Blaine tried to shout, but his voice was hoarse and stuck in his throat and it came out a raspy whisper that made Kurt drop the hand he'd outstretched again. Blaine's face had crumpled, his entire posture collapsing in on itself like he was doing, and a huge, fat tear left Blaine's eye, only to be caught in the wrinkles he'd made when he'd shattered. "I wish you _could_. I wish you didn't have to. I wish -"

"Blaine."

Kurt was more grateful than anything at the sound of Santana's voice as she pulled aside the curtain gently. She spared him a glance - and then returned to the boy she'd been addressing. "You need to rest. We all do. We've been awake too long."

When nobody moved, Santana snapped her fingers and pointed behind her, her movements precise and jagged. "Kurt. Out."

Kurt looked at Blaine.

He'd said he wanted Kurt to leave. He'd said he wished he would. But when Blaine met his eyes, it was clear that what he had been going to say was the opposite. Blaine wanted Kurt out so he didn't have to feel like he was dying in the place he lived; but he needed Kurt there to live at all, and he needed someone to hold him.

"Kurt."

"I'm going," Kurt told her, and all Blaine did was look away, so he went.

* * *

"Come on, Blaine," Santana said, taking his hand as gently as she could. "We should bandage you up."

When he looked up at her, she bit the inside of her cheek to remind herself not to cry, which she'd been repressing since they'd spoken while Kurt was in the bathroom.

"Your hand," she said, and his face dropped in understanding.

"Okay," he agreed, and so she led him back into the bathroom. She was really leaning towards redecorating the room if they could; the same floor tiles and smooth walls and irritatingly small mirror over the stained sink, and the shower that sometimes gave the people in the apartment below them a shower… it was all starting to give her a migraine.

That, and Blaine hurt himself in here without her knowing for what was apparently quite some time. She looked down at her feet and wondered just how often he'd had to wash blood off the floor, in the early hours of the morning, when people as good as he was should be doing something great like eating ice cream and not when they should be washing blood off a floor.

She looked back at him just in time for him to stop dead in his tracks and say, "Something's wrong."

"What is it?"

"He… he did something." Blaine's eyes widened in panic and traveled up and down the drawers, and Santana followed his gaze when it eventually froze on the middle of the bottom. It was unevenly closed; the right side was out just a little bit more than the left, but not enough for anyone other than the person who shut it previously to notice. Blaine sucked in a short, hiccuped breath, and said, "He did something," again.

"What did he do?" Santana asked, afraid of the answer.

Blaine took his hand from hers and bent down almost tenderly, and when his knees hit the floor he visibly shuddered and told her without looking at her, "You don't have to watch."

"Wh-" _Oh_. So that was where he kept it… them… whatever. She considered looking away like he made it clear she should want to do. She considered never laying eyes on the things that made him bleed. But she also considered what it would mean if it did, and how, to him, the things Blaine relied on wouldn't be worth looking at to her, and even if it made her want to puke, she wasn't going to look away. "No, it's okay."

Blaine didn't hesitate after she said it, and she hoped it was because he trusted her, and not because he was desperate to find out what Kurt had done. So Santana directed her eyes towards the drawer when Blaine pulled it out, and successfully managed not to gag when she saw the sharp, shining razor glint in the artificial lighting, on top of the journal she knew too well (though she doubted she knew what was in it now as well as she did weeks ago).

Before, she'd had difficulty picturing it. Blaine, on the bathroom floor, when it was dark, the fake lights making his curls look more brown than black, with a blade in his hand and to his ankle. But she saw it now, and it was… if she'd been anyone else, or if she'd loved him a little less than she did, or if they hadn't just discussed what they'd discussed, maybe she'd have broken down and cried then. But she didn't. She was Santana.

"He read it."

"What?"

"My journal. He read it." Blaine was getting angry again. "But we just… we just settled this. It was only a month or two ago. He only told me a month or two ago." Santana searched for words, but every time she drew close, another shaking sentence passed from his mouth, and she was sent reeling again. "I don't understand. He knew… he knows. Oh, he was… he was pitying me. God, he was pitying me. That's why he wanted to apologize. He -"

"No, no, no no," Santana rushed in, bending down and catching Blaine's wrist before he could move the blade like he aimed to. She didn't want to see him touch it. "How do you know he read it?"

"I always put the blade in the top right corner," Blaine explained, but his anger wasn't anger anymore, it was delving straight into hysterics. His eyes filled with tears and flickered over the room, the drawer, over Santana, and his voice and words trembled, and he looked - as much as Santana found the notion odd - a lot more like her Blaine somehow. "Never just sloppily in the middle. He moved it, he touched it. It feels different, he read it, he must have -"

"It's okay, Blaine -"

"But he kept it from me for _months_, even though I knew, and told me he wouldn't read it _during_ that time, which was clearly a lie, and now he knows that I know he doesn't trust me and -"

"Wait, honey, Kurt does trust you," Santana told him, confused, her brow furrowing. "Is this about the 'sex toy' comment? You know he says things he doesn't mean when he gets frustrated -"

"No, not that, not that!" Blaine shook his head fervently. "The - the - it was w-when I m-met Adam with you guys -"

"What? What did he say?" Santana begged, clasping her other hand around the free wrist Blaine had moved unintentionally towards the drawer. When Blaine started crying when she made the contact, she loosened her grip, but didn't let him go. "B, you need to talk to me."

"I wasn't supposed t-to hear," Blaine blubbered, and Santana recognized this, these actions, the way he teetered, unstable, even sitting back on his heels. "I was outside, and coming in I heard K-Kurt say it, and he s-said, 'Once a cheater, always a… a cheater', and I -"

_"Triggers?" Kurt asked._

_"If I were to say the words 'heart attack', what's the first thing you think of?"_

_"My dad."_

_"A trigger is like that, a bit," Rachel explained. "It's when you hear or see or smell or touch something that reminds you of a certain thing, except for a trigger, it basically reverts your mind to the precise moment when your trigger became your trigger, and your body goes back to the chemical state it was in then. So a retired soldier's trigger could be a gunshot or seeing blood, and when that happens, he kind of has a panic attack."_

_"Blaine doesn't have panic attacks," Santana and Kurt said at the same time, and then looked at each other evenly._

_"Okay then," Rachel said, "That doesn't mean he can't have a trigger. What if something reminded him of when he cheated on you?"_

_Kurt flinched. "I don't know. Maybe he'd cry? We haven't really… talked about when it… happened."_

_"His body would go back to the chemical state it was in then," Rachel kept going. "He'd be right back in that moment when the guilt first hit him."_

_"So he'd still feel like he'd just cheated?" Santana clarified._

_"In other words, he'd feel like 'once a cheater, always a cheater'," Kurt repeated her._

_"Yup," Rachel nodded. "That's what it is. We don't know if it's Blaine's, but it could be that."_

"Blaine, stand up," Santana ordered, her lips tighter than she expected them to be, and she pulled the boy to his feet. "You're having a panic attack."

"What? I-I don't -"

"You're having a panic attack," Santana repeated calmly. "And you must have heard that out of context. We were talking about triggers and how you might feel if you were brought back to the night of you cheating. Kurt trusts you, Blaine. And you're having a panic attack."

"But I d-don't!"

"You are now," Santana told him. "It's a good thing, if you think about it."

"W-What? How?"

She smiled. "Instead of not feeling, you're feeling too much. And it's physical now instead of just mental and emotional - or, well, physical in a way that's not self-inflicted - and you're getting better."

He stared at her so blankly beyond the blatant hysteria she lost hope for a moment that he even understood what being better was like anymore. But then it was there; the understanding that he didn't have to bleed in that moment to feel as immensely as he could. But with that understanding came not just relief, but fear. "It's t-too m-much, San, I don't w-want to -"

"Shhh, honey, you'll be fine," she soothed, running her hands through his hair and nudging the drawer closed with her foot. "I'm right here and you're safe now. I promise I'm here. Right here. Waving my arms like a crazy person." And she did so as an example, flapping her arms around and flinging her limbs about randomly, almost hitting the wall and grazing the mirror with her knuckles.

Blaine giggled behind his tears and she dropped her arms to his shoulders.

"See?" she asked. "Right here."

* * *

Kurt barely managed to fall asleep at all. He was surprised when he did; so surprised he almost woke himself up again just by falling asleep. But the fact of the matter was that he heard the slivers of words from under the bathroom door for a long enough time that it beat down on him having to strain to hear until he passed out of fatigue.

Blaine didn't know that. Blaine half expected him to be awake, so he could talk to him, so they could talk - but when he pulled aside the curtain, he was fast asleep under Santana's covers, snoring ever-so-lightly, his shoulders rising and falling with his even breaths. For a moment, Blaine watched him sleep; he watched the innocence play over his features with the light that danced through the covered window, he watched how his breaths didn't cost him any pain, he watched how he gripped the pillow tighter than he'd gripped Blaine in a while - with the exception of the shower, but that wasn't something Blaine was too keen to think about.

So he pulled the curtain shut again and returned to his room.

"He's asleep," Santana deduced, as soon as he entered, from her position sitting on Kurt's side of Blaine's bed.

"Yeah," Blaine confirmed loosely, flopping himself on the mattress lazily. He felt like he was allowed to, after how long he'd been awake and what all had happened in that time. So when Santana shifted but didn't say anything, he titled his head back and grimaced when he noticed that she was looking off into space with an expression she probably didn't want him to see. "Are you alright?"

"I'm fine," she responded automatically, snapping back into herself and looking down at him. "Just thinking."

He thought about what she might be thinking about. How it had taken him an hour and a half to recover from that panic attack? What they'd talked about? He hated that option, but it was probably the right one. She had stopped when he needed her to, like she said she would, but still… he hadn't drug up those old memories in quite a while in such vivid detail, and it wasn't fun to remember it.

_From when Eli first greeted him the pit in his stomach had told him it was wrong. When Eli first kissed him, he tried not to gag, and instead passed it off as a moan - which he realized a moment later was the wrong things to do, because it only encouraged him._

_Blaine could describe every tiny thing in Eli's bedroom in detail, because while it was happening, he looked everywhere but at Eli. Eli's dresser's wood stain didn't match his nightstand. His closet doors were still and plastered in posters of semi-naked men. An old, discarded, worn-looking sock was tossed onto the otherwise meticulously clean floor. The ceiling fan wasn't going, but the lights were on._

_He focused on all of it intently, but even it couldn't distract from how Eli groaned and thrusted and physically hit him down when he tried to get away. "Stop" Blaine told him, but Eli told him he wouldn't. "I don't want to" Blaine told him, but Eli told him he did. "I have a boyfriend" Blaine told him, but Eli said he obviously didn't care about him much if he'd come over._

_"Get off me" Blaine told him, but Eli held him down and fucked him into the stuff mattress with so much force he bruised._

"About what?"

"That was your first panic attack, wasn't it?" she asked.

_For someone as emotional and emotionally vulnerable as Blaine, panic attacks when things get to be too much are expected. But that's not what happens. Since he was a little kid, panic attacks had never really been anything but foreign to him. There were times when he panicked, sure, but he never had a full-out chemical unbalance because of stress. Or if he did it was a different sort._

_Blaine would get to the point where the stress and frustration and fear would become too overwhelming, and it was like his body shut down all emotion whatsoever. It was impossible to feel, at least until the point where when the emotion started to return he'd spent so long being apathetic that it was no longer overwhelming. As a tool, a lot of people could have seen it as an advantage. He didn't. At all._

_So when Cassandra July decided that he was "a fairytale dwarf so short he has to sing everything and dance pathetically just so people know to look down if he has any chance of being seen" and "a ridiculous elf monk with weird round ears who might as well have died his hair rainbow before he glued it to his scalp" on top of all the homework he was behind on because of his absences due to injuries, he came home that day and found that Santana was already there._

_She greeted him, and he barely heard it. And then he knew something was wrong._

_If it had been ten years prior, what he said would have been "Please get Cooper." He'd never hear himself say it or feel anything behind the words, but when Cooper was there he'd somehow drag something out of Blaine - anger at his selfishness, humor at his jokes, sadness at his worry. And then the attack would cease and Blaine could feel again._

_But when Cooper left for L.A., Blaine was stuck with his parents. His parents who were dead-set against him being gay. But he had nobody else to go to when it happened, so his words became "Please get my parents."_

_His parents never helped really, just stayed around him long enough for the attack to subside - and they considered that good enough and left him alone again._

_And then he'd met Kurt._

_He'd only had an attack like that twice since he met him, but both times he'd repeated "Please get Kurt" like a mantra. And Kurt would come and Kurt would sit directly in front of him and Kurt would hold his face between his hands and tease his lips in a way that always drove Blaine crazy. And then the craziness would dig through the apathy and his emotions would come back, and Kurt would force him to talk them through so that when they were done Kurt could tease him again and he'd respond accordingly._

_Kurt, unlike the others, would make him feel good, and keep him feeling good even when he made him dwell on the bad. And then the bad didn't seem so bad._

_So when he shut the door behind him and slid down it, his eyes downcast even as Santana hurried over to him, he just said, "Please get Kurt."_

_"What's wrong?" she asked. She knelt beside him and put her hand on his arm. "Anderson?"_

_"Please get Kurt."_

_"Blaine, you can talk to me -"_

_"Please. Get Kurt."_

_And so maybe ten minutes later, when Santana had put him on the couch, Kurt came bursting through the door, and Blaine could see and hear again._

_The first thing he did was sit directly beside Blaine and take his face between his hands. Kurt's palms were warm on his cheeks, and he could feel the warmth spread through him, almost tauntingly. You can feel this! You can feel this! And then Kurt nuzzled his nose against Blaine's, and brushed their lips together just the faintest bit. He didn't speak - he didn't have to - but he did continue to kiss him ever-so-lightly, drawing out even the smallest shred of desire that unwound from Blaine's stomach._

_And he didn't stop until the warmth in Blaine's eyes spilled over._

"Yes," Blaine answered. "You know they just don't happen to me." Santana nodded, but didn't ask anything else, her eyes far away again. And though the silence lasted only about half a minute, Blaine broke it anxiously - it was too thick to sleep in and too thin to leave behind. "Why?"

"I'm wondering," Santana began, "if maybe it's a step towards you getting better, or if it means you're only getting worse. In terms of you… of you… you know."

"Cutting," Blaine supplied listlessly.

She nodded again. "Yeah."

"I don't know," Blaine considered her hypothesis. "If anything, it would be a step in the right direction, right? I mean, feeling so much I can't contain it… it's better than what normally happens."

"But it's not," Santana argued. "A lot of people do what you do because they feel too much, not because the don't feel. If this is a transition from one thing you're used to to something it takes you an hour and a half to get past at a time - and only with my help - I'm not sure if you'd be better off or not."

"At least Kurt wouldn't get angry at me for not talking about my feelings," Blaine said.

"Don't look at it like that," Santana snapped, and he looked at her, slightly uncomfortable with her tone. "Don't try to see the advantages other people would have if you entered a situation that hurt you. Your circumstances should be changed to benefit you, not someone else, no matter how much you love them."

"When did you become a therapist?" Blaine asked, bitterness leaking into his words without his permission.

"I'm not one," Santana threw back, before sighing and slumping and continuing with, "But maybe you should see one."

Blaine paused. "What?"

"Not on any kind of recurring schedule," Santana defended herself, "But at least once. Get a medical diagnosis, see if there's something that's going on inside your head that we can get help for. Pills. Medicine. Something."

"You want me to see a shrink?" Blaine actively let the acid color his voice this time.

"I want you to feel better," Santana looked him square in the eyes. "And if that means seeing a shrink or downing six pills a day, then yes."

"I'm not going to feel better because I sit on a couch and tell a stranger that I'm messed up, Santana," Blaine growled, sitting up, his back to her.

She didn't fight back, and Blaine stared at the wall. The distant, echoing tick of the wall clock in the kitchen marked the seconds as they passed, and when not a rustle or a word came from behind him, he spoke up again, furthering his argument.

"It's always the same, anyway," Blaine told her. "They always start off with how you're feeling. How the hell am I supposed to answer? I'm _not_ feeling, that's why I'm there."

There was a slight movement and his cheap mattress bounced the tiniest bit when Santana moved behind him - but she didn't speak, so he kept going.

"And once I lie through my teeth and tell them some fake answer, they move on to why I'm there. Again, because I'm not feeling. But I've just told them how I'm feeling, so obviously, I can't tell them that. So I just say I'm sad."

_Tick._

_Tock._

"But then they ask why, and what am I supposed to say? Am I supposed to tell them that my boyfriend and I are fighting? Am I supposed to say I got disowned? Am I supposed to tell them I'm cutting? What am I supposed to do? So I tell them I don't know."

_Tick._

_Tock._

"And so they try to find out. They ask me what's happening, what's been going on. How do they want me to answer? So I just answer with some bullcrap about school and friends and stuff and from that they just plunge into a bunch of weird crap about television and books I read and somewhere along the way they write down all the lies I tell them, and nobody benefits."

_Tick._

_Tock._

"And by the time the session ends, they get their money for listening to me whine about my problems that aren't even mine, and they make some bad conclusion about some rare mental disorder I don't have, and I'm put on the same old depression medication that doesn't help at all, because I lied my way through. It's a cycle we go through a hundred times with shrinks; ask a question, lie about the answer, get a new question from the lie, lie about that answer - it goes on and o-."

"How do you know what a session is like, Blaine?"

He whipped himself around to look at her, and to his shock and dismay, she was biting her bottom lip and rocking back and forth on her knees silently, her cheeks sucked in so she wouldn't be tempted to let them be loose enough to let tears slide down them. She was trying not to cry; and succeeding, but the fact remained that she had to try at all.

So the truth came out. "I went to one after… after Eli."

Santana's wrists flexed, but other than that, she didn't react.

"And before I came out. My parents were worried about me the first time, thought maybe I was depressed. They took me to see a shrink. The second time it was right after Eli, before I even came to tell Kurt, and it was still fresh, and I thought maybe talking to someone who didn't care about me about it would help. Both times went the same way, and neither helped."

"You never actually told..?"

"No."

"They prescribed you depression meds?"

"I tried them. Both times."

"They didn't work."

"No."

Santana moved quickly, gracefully, towards him, her arms outstretched, and without a second thought he fell into them, and she she hugged him he realized he was crying. "I love you, San."

_He sighed and skipped it and hugged her like she'd asked him too, asked him to in a moment of total weakness and regret and god if he ever spoke of this again she would murder the kid, but right now she really needed him to hug her. And he did. He was warm and comforting and even though he was small his presence seemed to take up the whole room and just exist in a way that was comforting, and he whispered small reassurances to her, apologies and promises and encouragements that she hadn't heard from anyone in way too long. The last one she'd heard last from only her mother during their phone call the week before: "I love you, San." The nickname, however, was new, and even though a long time ago she'd promised herself she hated nicknames like it, it sent a relieving shot through her._

_"Love you t-too, B."_

"Yeah. You too, B. I love you, too." Her grip was suddenly tighter. "I'm really proud of you, I - yeah. Love you t-too, B." She sucked in a deep breath, even though he'd felt like the air had been kicked forcibly from his lungs. "Go to sleep," she whispered, and she pulled him backwards; he followed her orders and moved up the bed while she turned and got the blanket, before laying it over top of both of them. "Is this okay?" she asked, suddenly sounding nervous.

"Of course," he promised, and reached out for her, pulling her into his chest; she was warm and compliant, and laid her head down just below his collarbone, her hands resting on his stomach, her fingers curled. Her heartbeat was actually less strong than his, and he didn't expect that - but it was strong enough to override the sound of that damn clock, and it had soon lulled him to sleep.

* * *

She could hear Kurt breathing on the other side of the curtain. It had been even at first, but over time, it had grown jagged and heavy, and she could hear him tossing and turning, and every now and them she could have sworn he woke up for a few seconds and then drifted back into restless sleep.

And, to break her heart even further, Blaine was the same way. Though to begin with he'd held her closely, and he'd kissed her hair and wrapped his arms around her, now he was turning onto his side, and kicking in his sleep, and muttering at the nightmares he was having.

It was completely stupid, and she told herself that. It was ridiculous to be jealous of them, and to still be angry because she wanted nothing like what they had. Jealous that they loved each other so much that when an issue went unresolved they still couldn't bear not sleeping next to each other when the opportunity was right there; but she didn't want their fights, and their distrust, and their problems, and… and…

And she wanted to be enough that Blaine would still hold her, even in his subconscious. It had no reason to it, she told herself. She loved Blaine, and she really… she really wanted to be that person for him, his best friend, because he was hers and she was pretty certain that if she'd been the one to fall asleep first they'd still be cuddling like they were. But he'd pushed her to the side in his sleep, and Kurt was his best friend, and… she didn't know why she needed validation from the haunted boy next to her, but she did.

She wanted… she didn't know. She wanted to be held by Blaine and to fall asleep by her best friend and know that she was his, too. She wanted to snuggle with him, god damn it, it didn't matter who she was or how much of a bitch she was. She wanted to help him and she needed help, too.

God, she was a mess. Blaine's problems were way worse, and she knew that, and she wanted to fix that. But did she… did she want to so that he'd be better, or so that her problems could be focused on? Because she was an emotional train wreck and nobody could notice because there was a living, breathing catastrophe right next to her. She loved him, with all her heart, and it scared her a lot, but she could deal with that. She just…

She just stared straight ahead and cried and kept seeing the barrel of the gun right in front of her, and Blaine's blades all around, and it - it - she needed to sleep.

So she did what anyone would do; she stood up, and walked to the other side of the bed, and uncovered Blaine before she picked him up as gently as she could. And then she carried him to her bed on the other side of the curtain, and she laid him down next to Kurt. She bent down to pick up the blanket Kurt had kicked to the floor, and when she came back up, they were clutching each other.

She put the blanket over top of them and went back to Blaine's bed and laid down and stared up at the ceiling, willing herself not to blink and dislodge the tears any more than she had. It was useless and she cried until her eyes burned as much as her head.

She didn't fall asleep for another several hours.


	9. Part 9

Rachel woke up to a dark city's glistening outline against the last remnants of a sunset. Consider they'd stayed up so late and gone to bed somewhere around noon, waking up at midnight wasn't too bad a time to wake up.

However, waking up with a hangover - not the worst she'd ever had, but still not pleasant at all - and tangled in bed sheets with the sleeping form of her trouble friend's brother next to her didn't enhance the experience so much as freak her out really badly.

She covered her eyes uselessly; it was already nearly impossible to see because of the darkness of the time, but the few lights they'd left on in the kitchen and the living room were bright enough to send her head pounding back into her skull. She felt her bones everywhere but there slink further into brittleness, and the hammers kept attacking her brain relentlessly. Her stomach churned uneasily; she'd eaten an early dinner, no breakfast, and no lunch. It was past the point of growling and had begun stabbing her insides to get her to feed herself.

She briefly considered things - but only briefly. Concentration hurt. But in those brief moments, she thought about what Cooper might do. What she might do. If she made breakfast - which she should - should she make some for him too?

But then concentration pain hit and she bit back a groan not unlike the ones she'd released before she'd collapsed into drunken sleep and gave up on thinking, deciding that she might as well make breakfast for both of them. Her first task was to untangle herself from Cooper; she pulled her leg out from between his, and when he responded physically by shifting his legs, searching for hers, she took a deep breath and pulled herself out of the grasp of his arms, and, as quickly as she could, moved her pillow where he'd been holding her.

She felt cold when she was successfully standing in the night air in a silent apartment, but more than that, she felt dizzy. She took a few moments to make sure she was alright to walk, decided - for once in her life - not to be so over-dramatic and to just carry on without grumbling, and headed to the kitchen.

She'd been drunk. That much was painfully obvious. She passed the half-empty wine bottle still sitting on the coffee table and looked away; their glasses had been on her bedside table, and she raised a hand to run it through her hair and rub her temple when her bare feet barely escaped the leg of the , she'd been drunk; but not so drunk she couldn't remember. She'd only been slightly drunk, just enough to feel things she wouldn't feel otherwise and make decisions based off of that; she remembered talking, and flirting, and dancing, and then kissing and all other activities that kissing led to.

To be honest, Rachel had seriously missed getting properly laid. A ghost of a smile flickered across her lips at remembrance of the previous day - she opened the fridge and stuck her hand in, searching for the frozen packaged waffles she knew they had. Cooper was an undeniable relief and infinitely better than her hand (she had a sneaking suspicion that Santana had hidden her dildo when she'd still lived there, but like hell was she going to ask about it) and though she could never love him like she loved Finn, she had to admit that the sex was pretty damn awesome.

She found the waffles and drew them out of their box, ripping open the packaging with her teeth while she closed the fridge with her free hand. The crinkling/tearing sound seemed almost to echo in the silence of the place, and she paused for a moment to hear the stutter in Cooper's breathing, and then hear it return to its normal, smooth pace.

She stuck the waffles in the toaster, adjusted the time, and started the toasting process. She thought maybe that she'd overdone it, but every time she tried to make the timer run for a shorter time, whatever she had inside came out under-done. She wished there was a clear toaster, so you could see when your bread or waffles or bagels were done.

She shook her head. She'd gone from sex to toast in such a short amount of time mentally that it was almost disconcerting. She really shouldn't have expected anything less when she was hungover.

And then there was another stutter in Cooper's breathing - and then a murmur - and then sheets rustling - and then a grunt and a deep breath and feet hitting the floor when a blanket was tossed aside.

Rachel froze. She didn't know what to do at all, and she was in no state to consider her options, so she just froze. Cooper's footsteps grew closer and closer and then he came out from the curtain and stopped because he saw her. His eyes were bloodshot, but she knew hers were, too; he was stumbling around like she was, and his hand was in his hair, too, like hers had been. They were so remarkably similar it was almost unnerving.

"Hi," Cooper said after a beat - and even after waking up, his voice was clear. Like hers.

"Hi," she said back, and then fell silent again.

They both dissolved into laughter at the same time.

* * *

Kurt woke up around three in the morning. At first, he thought he'd woken up sky outside was glittering with the reflections of windows and the lights of New York, and the distant, dancing twinkles looked like fireflies in front of a thick velvet that was the sky. The air was crisp, and cool, and lovely, and Kurt reveled in it for a moment, closing his eyes again and breathing in.

The air around him smelled wonderful. The bed was unfamiliar and he was on the wrong side, but it was still a bed. He was snuggled warmly underneath the sheets, and they were fairly soft. Not so soft he felt smothered, but not coarse enough to be bothersome.

It took a few seconds for him to recognize Blaine in his arms, and when he did he felt a million steel cables that had been keeping his muscles tense snap; he snuggled further into the bedding and Blaine, his smile completely naturally spreading. Blaine's curls were tickling his chin, and Kurt could feel Blaine's hand on his shoulder, gripping him tightly, like he did when he needed to either hold or be held. His other arm must have been under him, because Kurt could feel Blaine's chest pressing into his side, and his toes pressed against his leg with their knees locked together.

The sheets were warm where they were, and Blaine's voice was the first thing Kurt heard, and it was talking to him, talking to him without anger, without sadness, just talking to him. Quickly. And his grip on his arm was a bit tighter than it needed to be. That meant he was awake, right? Oh, he was awake, too. Kurt's smile grew and he searched for Blaine's lips in his blindness, forgetting, in his sleepy, happy haze, that he had yet to open his eyes.

"Kurt, wake up. Kurt, I'm bleeding."

"What?" Kurt exhaled, his smile disappearing and his eyes flying open. Sure enough, the arm that was under Blaine was holding him up, and his palm - his injured palm - was held in front of him, above Kurt's chest - and the stitching had torn. Kurt sucked in a breath at the sight of his hand; he could actually see into the cut, see deep into the red, sticky substance that was pooling at the edges and that had started running itself through the lines of Blaine's palm. He choked on the "Oh, Blaine" he tried to say, and instead he just squeaked.

"I don't want to wake up Santana," Blaine said, his voice low, "And I know you can sew, Kurt. I just need stitching that's not going to tear."

"I thought you were supposed to bandage your hand before you slept?" Kurt whispered hoarsely after he swallowed, still unable to tear his eyes from his boyfriend's hand - Blaine's fingers twitched in response to his voice and curled in, and as a response the blood gushed a bit. Kurt's stomach would have been emptying itself, if there had been anything inside it.

"I was going to," Blaine sounded so ashamed of himself, "But I had a panic attack, and it took me a really long time to calm down, and by the time I did we forgot about it and just went to sleep."

"A panic attack?" Kurt's voice sounded a lot more dubious than he'd intended it too, and when Blaine hung his head a bit, Kurt looked up, only to miss his chance at meeting Blaine's eyes. "It's alright to have one, Blaine, it's just that you don't. What -"

"You read my journal again," Blaine muttered.

Kurt's blood ran cold before it starting burning, and he threw the covers off of them, moving quickly to his sewing kit under the bed. "I'll sterilize my sewing needle. In the meantime, try and keep it closed, hold a few tissues to it."

"Kurt, you read my journal."

"I know, sweetheart."

"Don't - don't call me that. You said you wouldn't read my journal. Just a couple weeks ago you said it."

Kurt opened his sewing kit with a snap and started looking for the materials, "Blaine, you need to hold something to the cut. Don't let yourself bleed out."

"Why did you read it?"

"I'm serious, Blaine. Get some tissues -"

"Kurt, I'm not -"

"That's right, you're not." Kurt snapped his sewing kit shut again and they both flinched at the sound against their whispers. "You're not getting anything to hold to the cut, and you're going to drip all over Santana's sheets."

"I'm not doing anything until you talk to me!"

Kurt looked up then, and saw everything there was to see in Blaine, and saw exactly how rigid he was with confusion; but he said, "We are talking. You woke me up to help you because you're bleeding, and I'm helping you for that. When I've patched you up we can talk."

"Promise?"

"Promise."

Blaine clambered to Kurt's side of the bed and before Kurt knew what he was doing, he'd bent down and kissed him. His lips were soft, pliant from just waking up, and eager in a nervous kind of way; they pressed into Kurt's as tenderly as Blaine nuzzled their noses until Kurt's eyebrows fell and he dropped the needle and kissed Blaine square back. And though Blaine was bleeding, and though they'd just been fighting, and though kissing was the last thing Kurt expected to be doing, Blaine was kissing him, and he was kissing Blaine, and it shot just as much warmth into him as it had before the whole mess started.

_His_ Blaine was kissing him. Not the Blaine he'd been practically living with for the past month or so; _his_ Blaine. The Blaine that felt for Kurt like Kurt felt for him. The Blaine that felt.

And Blaine pulled away with something resembling a grin, and said, with no small measure of cockiness, "_Now_ I'll find tissues."

Kurt just watched him walk into the living room in amazement and confusion before he remembered there was a needle on the ground he needed to sterilize.

* * *

Blaine's hand was tighter than it had been, and there was blood all over it, and it hurt like hell, but it was sewn together again. Kurt was running water from the sink over his needle as quietly as he could, and he'd left Blaine to sit on the couch alone.

Blaine wasn't sure how to proceed with the situation. On one hand, he knew that Kurt didn't distrust him… at the time he thought he had. If ever there was a time for Kurt to distrust him, it was then, after everything Blaine had said and done to encourage him to believe in his own distrust. It's amazing how thinking someone else doesn't trust you makes it seem like you don't trust them, because it either makes you realize you don't really, or it makes you both realize how much you do. Blaine was hoping for the latter. But the entire time, Kurt had insisted on silence, focusing intently on Blaine's palm and only looking away to keep himself from gagging (he said he needed to "breathe", but it was obvious). Blaine hadn't spoken to him and didn't know how to broach the subject without sounding accusatory.

He moved his hand, by habit, to his hair, and flinched when his injury met his forehead - he gasped on contact, and immediately bit his lip afterward, averting the pain from the stitches to his mouth.

"What?" Kurt asked, reappearing in the room suddenly and increasing his pace when he heard Blaine's intake of breath. "What hurts?"

"Nothing," Blaine said by habit, and then blinked and corrected himself. "I used my hand and didn't mean to, that's all."

"That's not nothing," Kurt scolded, taking up his earlier position in front of Blaine, but this time he didn't reach for his hand - he reached for his face, brought it closer to him gently, and then just barely brushed his lips against Blaine's cheek.

"What was that for?" Blaine asked when Kurt pulled away smiling.

"I was apologizing for reading your journal," Kurt explained, and Blaine understood the small smile.

"Ah."

"I did it," Kurt began, "because I didn't understand, and I knew it had answers."

"Answers I didn't give you," Blaine clarified.

Kurt nodded. "Yes. And that's not your fault, but I _am_ your fiance. I want you to be as happy and healthy as possible, and I had only the smallest of hints as to why you were _un_happy and _un_healthy." He paused. "Was that..?"

"No, you're fine."

"Okay." He steeled himself up again to continue speaking. "I know I shouldn't have read it, and I'm really sorry, Blaine. I understand most of everything now, I think, and I only have a few more questions -"

"You mean it _didn't_ tell you everything you needed to know?" Blaine asked, slightly dumbstruck. "I put everything in there."

"I know," Kurt told him, and reached out for his good hand earnestly, taking it in his and rubbing his thumb over Blaine's knuckles soothingly like he always did. "But I think sometimes I just don't understand. You have a very chaotic mind space, Blaine, and mine is very organized. It's hard to make sense of everything, no matter how carefully I read."

Blaine swallowed and looked at how Kurt's eyes flickered all over his face; they grazed over his cheekbones, they dipped into his jaw, they skimmed his forehead - they studied him and they did it well, and knowingly; Kurt knew his face. He was just etching it into his mind again. "Alright. Ask away."

Kurt's eyes abruptly stopped their observation and stared straight at him in surprise. "Really?"

"You say we need to talk more and you're right," Blaine said.

Kurt returned to studying, but with narrowed eyes and unsure flickers, and Blaine was reminded in his gut why they were having problems. _Once a cheater, always a cheater_… Nevertheless, Kurt eventually shrugged slightly and drew in a breath and sighed, "Ooookay."

When he paused and didn't continue for a while, Blaine squeezed his hand, smiled reassuringly, and said, "Go on."

"Alright." Kurt nodded again, this time for himself. "Well, um, first thing's first… why did you start thinking I don't trust you?"

"Oh, that," Blaine said, and the most relief he'd ever put in a grin spread across his cheeks. "It was when I re-met Adam. I was about to come through the door and I heard you say 'Once a cheater, always a cheater', and I thought… yeah. But it's okay, Santana cleared it up for me."

"You thought -" Kurt broke himself off and tried really hard to fight a smile. "Wow. Okay."

"Yeah." And for the second time in the past day, Blaine Anderson giggled - and for the second time in the past day, he was still upset when he did.

"Okay, second," Kurt said, moving on quickly so they didn't have to dwell on it. "Do you trust me?"

"Of course," Blaine furrowed his brow at the question. "Did I do something to -"

"Not anything in specific," Kurt tried to placate him, "It's just… this whole thing because you overheard a phrase out of context? I realize what it must have sounded like, but, Blaine, if you trusted me, you should've been able to ask me about it."

Blaine blinked five times before he understood. "No! I mean, yes, I trust you, I just - that was never my train of thought, Kurt, I thought that since you didn't trust me, me bringing it up would only make you think I was eavesdropping and -"

"B," Kurt's voice was amused when it cut him off, "You should probably lower your voice if you don't want to wake the girl sleeping in your bed."

Blaine snickered at the wording without thinking about it and Kurt was quick to join him. "Okay, sorry," Blaine murmured, quieter, his head downfallen and his eyes peering up from under his lashes. "I just… I trust you with everything, Kurt."

"Okay," Kurt told him. "So you'll trust that I'm being honest when I say I trust you?"

Blaine laughed silently and then said, "Yes."

"Good," Kurt smirked. "Now that that's out of the way, something just a tad more serious - what exactly happened with Eli?"

Blaine's laughter and breath were both gone as soon as Kurt said _his_ name, because he could feel _him_ again. The same way he felt him every time the name was said, or he read it, or he so much as thought it - it was as if those three letters brought back how his arms had been pinned beneath him and his legs had been held down and there had been the weight of someone he didn't want to feel the weight of on top of him. He could feel _his_ heart thrumming quickly, too quickly, his hips thrusting quickly, too quickly -

"_Blaine_!"

"I just had this conversation with Santana," Blaine gasped, wrenching himself away from Kurt without thinking about it, because Kurt's arms had started to feel like _his_. Kurt looked absolutely, purely shocked, and Blaine wasn't sure what he'd done, but it had clearly curtailed their happy portion of their talk.

"You said I was right, that we needed to talk," Kurt defended himself.

"I know!" Blaine squeaked, his voice cracking and dancing up an octave, and he covered his ears and shut his eyes - but he still heard the constant thrumming of _his_ heart and his own heart, and he still saw how Kurt fought back trembling because he didn't know how to help, and he still felt how each ridiculously painful breath filled his chest and slowly died, burning away, into something he needed to get rid of. "I know, I'm sorry."

"Just… tell me what hurts," Kurt's voice filtered between his fingers, and in it he found that _his_ pulse disappeared. So he told Kurt, hoping against himself that it would drown everything out:

"I can feel myself breathing and it hurts."

"Breathing?"

"No, feeling."

Kurt's breathing was louder than Blaine's, but Blaine could feel every trickle of oxygen slither its way into his lungs and then leave as something else, something he couldn't use, something hot and something worthless, changed from the useful, capable thing it was before Blaine got to it. "I don't understand," Kurt said slowly. "I thought not feeling was the problem you were having?"

"I don't know," Blaine muttered, shaking his head, trying to get the pulse out of his ears, "I don't know, I don't know -"

"Blaine," Kurt said firmly, and then there were hands, soft hands, gentle ones, loving ones, covering his, and then fingers slotting themselves between his and pulling them from his ears. "Tell me what you told Santana."

So he did.

And he didn't cry. And he didn't look at Kurt. And he didn't open his eyes or stop shaking or stop hearing that damn heartbeat stronger, louder, than his, and he didn't stop feeling that _his_ chest was on his stomach and _his_ hands against his neck, holding him there, and _his_ mouth was moaning Blaine's name and he felt it more than heard it, but then, when he finally had to say the word "Eli" - it all stopped.

It stopped because that was when Eli clambered off of him and told him to get dressed.

And also when Kurt told him he loved him.

Blaine didn't reply to either of them.

"Blaine?"  
_"You alright?"_

"No."

"Baby?"  
_"Is it because I don't look like my profile picture?"_

"No, I - "

"Blaine."

When Blaine looked up, Santana's face had joined Kurt's. And he was entirely - physically, mentally and emotionally - exhausted. He ached from the furthest curl on his head to the deepest cell in his body, and his eyes were wet and warm and stiff, and his arms were half-asleep, and he swore he could feel the bruises that had long ago faded away throbbing with freshness.

"Sorry," he choked, but his voice was as raw as it had been when Eli had finally allowed him to speak again. "They don't usually last that long."

"What don't usually last that long?" Santana asked him, in a voice far kinder than any Kurt seemed to have expected, because he gaped at her in bewilderment.

"The - the - I… remember… things," Blaine attempted to explain. "I guess… um, I… don't know."

"Would you call it a flashback?"

"I… guess?"

"Mm." Santana's face was impassive, but her voice was soft. "When did it start?"

"I don't… know."

"Kurt?"

"He grabbed the needle when I said E-"

"Stop," Santana hissed, snapping her fingers and making his eyebrows shoot up. Blaine took the information with a grain of salt - apparently he'd grabbed the needle, which would explain why it was on the floor, but he didn't remember doing it. "Don't. I avoided saying the name, and you need to."

"Why?"

"We found his trigger."

* * *

The plans had been meticulous.

They'd spent hours pouring their souls out over the internet together, looking at plane tickets, figuring out where to meet up, how their schedules would coincide. They'd spent a lot of long nights where there was nothing on the other end of the line for five minutes except clicking before somebody spoke with another idea. They'd spent weeks getting everything straightened out, from the time the first plane took off to when the last plane back home landed - and then she'd accidentally told Sam, and they had to figure out a way to fit him into the plans. And then they'd run into a transportation problem, and found their solution: Artie. There were backup hotel reservations, maps they all had, printout driving directions, exact change and an extra hundred dollars for each of them, and, in case even the smallest thing went off-schedule (nothing had so far), they had literally come up with a way to still meet up in New York, even if it took another three days.

So it wasn't all that surprising that while Brittany was on her second plane straight to New York, Tina had gotten off her first plane and met Sam at the train station, and together they'd boarded. Her luggage was light for the trip she was making, but it still weighed a ton after cleaning everything in her apartment before she left her roommate alone for a week and then doing nothing but let her arms sit and get sore on a plane for several hours. Her legs were fully functional again, and she was grateful for it; especially when she heard a loud, "TINA!" from a familiar voice, and turned to see her blond friend waving a sign with her picture on it above his head. Her old picture. From graduation.

She bit back a moan of exasperation and instead ran to him, dropping her suitcase beside her when she was close enough to launch herself into his arms. He dropped the sign to catch her, and spun her around, and though she and Sam had never been the closest, when Blaine wasn't around he was definitely her best friend; and she'd really, really missed hugging him.

And from there, it was another long ride, this time on a train. At least she had Sam; Brittany was going to be alone the whole trip, up until Artie picked her up at the airport in his cab.

But then they got to New York. Exactly on time. And Brittany sent them both a text saying she'd landed - exactly on time. And for the first time since waking up way too early in the morning, Tina smiled with a child-like excitement. She knew what had happened (Blaine had told Tina about his past self-harming himself, after Sam accidentally let it slip - but Tina didn't tell him that part), and she knew that Blaine was better. In fact, she'd texted him just the day prior, when he'd said he was making a surprise for Kurt, and then that he had to go to finish up. She'd texted him when she got off the plane, asking how things went, but she'd never gotten an answer. She'd then texted Kurt how he was, because they hadn't spoken in about two weeks, but he hadn't responded either - she assumed they were together and wanted to be alone.

Brittany was coming mostly for Santana but some for Kurt, Blaine, Artie and Rachel - Tina was coming mostly for Blaine but some for Kurt, Rachel, Artie and Santana, and Sam was doing the same as her. But whoever they were coming for, they were coming, and they were doing it together. Tina thought that both Brittany and Sam were being very mature about the whole thing; she knew how messy their breakup had been and how strange their friendship felt to them right now, but they were both behaving admirably.

And because they were behaving so admirably, when Brittany climbed out of her cab and helped Artie into his wheelchair in front of the apartment building where Sam and Tina were waiting for her, they all hugged just as tightly as the two of them had done earlier before they laughed and started bringing each other up-to-date on things you can't really talk about without being face-to-face, all the while heading into the building and up the elevator. Brittany had two bags as opposed to the one suitcase both Sam and Tina carried, but they didn't question her, because they'd all brought gifts - and Brittany had told them, due to air travel planning, how large hers were. Not what she'd gotten everyone, but that they were bigger than she could put in one bag. Artie's were each individually wrapped, something none of the rest of them had been able to do; he looked smug when they brought it up.

And then they were standing outside the door, and they checked the number each to make sure it was what it was the right one, and then all pulled out their phones, incapable of fighting their smiles of excitement. Tina's stomach was knotted in excitement and she was bouncing up and down - so was Brittany. Sam was tapping his foot anxiously, and Artie was biting his lip and looking at the door repeatedly. And then they all sent the New York four their texts in a single message: _SURPRISE_!

Tina shoved Sam out of the way and laughed, because then they both joined her in pounding on the door while Artie cheered them on from behind.

She heard Santana's voice say "Who the hell -" on the other side of the door, and they all stopped at that, and looked at each other, counted to three, and then, in unison, shouted, "YOU'VE GOT COMPANY!"

There were footsteps, a shout, a shuffle, and then the door was opening and Kurt's face was there, with Santana just over his shoulder and Blaine looking at them through his hands on the couch. None of them looked too happy, but when Blaine saw Tina at the forefront of the group, his face lit up, if only slightly; the first thing she noticed was that he was as pale as a ghost and looked ready to pass out and/or cry. "Blainey, what's wrong?" she asked immediately, and the smiles of her fellow suprisers behind her slipped. Kurt stepped aside automatically, and Tina barreled into the apartment - Blaine barely had time to open his arms before she was in them, her own arms wrapped around his torso and her head buried in his chest.

"Tina," he said instead of answering, exasperatedly and fondly, and kissed the top of her head. "I didn't know you were coming!"

"It was a surprise," Tina told him, and then she saw his hand. She didn't reach for it, because Blaine hadn't automatically hugged her with it, and that meant that it hurt. "What happened to your hand?"

"Britt -" Santana's voice was so much softer and tamer than Tina remembered, and she had to look up to see if it was actually Santana. But it was, and she was pulling Brittany into a hug tighter than the ones she'd had only minutes before, at the same time Sam told Kurt, "We didn't know you'd be here, we thought we'd have to go to you and Rachel's apartment. It's good to see you, man!"

"I'm back here, too!" Artie called. "What all's going on? Why is everyone so sad?"

Kurt was still and silent for a moment, and only when Brittany pulled away from Santana did he respond to Sam. "It's good to see you too, Sam, but you have absolutely _horrible_ timing."

"Is Blaine okay?" Brittany whispered, just loudly enough for them to hear, and anyone who knew her knew that she'd asked Santana if she was okay when nobody was listening, and Santana had told her yes.

"He will be," Santana said firmly.

"That's not what I asked, Tana," Brittany reprimanded gently, before he tilted her head and leaned forward and pecked Santana's cheek.

"What's wrong with Blaine?" Sam added, moving past Kurt into the room and making a beeline for Blaine. "Dude?"

"Is he hurt?" Artie piped up.

"I'm fine," Blaine called back. "It's great to see you guys!" The smile he wore was so fragile that Sam wasted no time sitting his ass down on the other side of Blaine and hugging him, too - being careful to avoid the bandaged hand he saw. Blaine hugged him back, but only just; and only, he suspected, because he was expected to.

"We brought presents?" Artie offered weakly, holding his gifts up for Kurt to see. "See, we each have one for the four of you."

"Come on in, Artie, everyone else has," Kurt said, his eyes locked on Blaine. Blaine looked over top of Tina to Artie and beckoned him in. "We should probably tell you what's happened in the last twenty-four hours."


	10. Part 10

They went to Callbacks.

Santana had been the one to suggest it. They'd all been surprised; after just living through a shooting at the bar where she worked, going to another bar seemed like the least comfortable thing she could have offered up. But she did, and so they went to Callbacks.

But not before everything was explained. They spent four hours going over everything; Blaine had to tell them the beginning of the story, but as soon as she could Santana took over. Not because she enjoyed it, but because she knew he couldn't - she was proved right when he looked at her and mouthed "Thank you" before melting back into Tina's tightening grip around his middle. Tina had, of course, started crying as soon as Blaine got to trying to describe how he'd felt before he'd been cutting, and then when he tried to skip over it and Santana stopped him and made him go back and tell the truth. She'd felt like a monster, especially when he looked at her like one, but she'd also felt proud when he said it out loud and didn't break down.

Tina was only the first to cry. By the time they actually got to the shooting, Sam was in tears and Kurt had to take over Santana because she had to comfort Brittany, who was crying and whimpering into her shoulder. Kurt started crying when he got to the shower part - instead of giving them all the graphic details, he simply said that he'd gotten caught up in the moment and held Blaine down when Blaine told him not to.

Sam had slapped him. Kurt had done nothing in response but hang his head in shame and silence.

And then Santana picked back up for him for a little while, telling the bits where she and Blaine talked - and the further into it she got the more she started realizing what Blaine meant by not being able to feel. The detachment she had to force herself into in order to actually keep talking about all the horrible things she talked about was really, really hard not to just sink into as a reflex - and even harder to get out of when Kurt had to take her place yet again and talk about how Blaine had woke up with a bloody hand. She found that as soon as she was out of the emptiness, everything was brighter, bolder, clearer, scarier, and she hated understanding exactly what Blaine meant when he said he couldn't feel and then followed it up by saying it hurt to feel - it sounded like a contradiction, but in all reality it was just relaying events as they happened.

And… Brittany.

As Kurt talked over Blaine's trigger, Santana heard a sniff, and turned to see Artie hiding behind his hands. Nobody else noticed - Tina was staring at Blaine, like she had been the whole time, and Sam was listening intently to Kurt, the slap forgotten, and Brittany's head was still in the crook of Santana's shoulder, staining her shirt. Not that Santana cared. She'd give up all her clothes entirely if it meant she could hold Brittany like she was. It had been forever since they'd talked, really…

But she had never seen Artie cry before, and he was crying, so she reached over to the practically-untouched box of tissues on the side table and handed one to him. He took it, not even looking at her - which was fine, because she never looked at him either.

But then the story was up, and they were left with sixteen unopened presents and Rachel and Cooper still in the other apartment - and everyone was crying.

"Who's up for a drink?" Santana asked loudly, and nearly everyone jumped and then stared at her, startled and not understanding. "I wouldn't mind getting drunk out of my skull."

"I shouldn't…" Blaine said, his voice small, and Santana didn't miss how when Tina squeezed him in response he didn't squeeze back, like he would have with her.

"Are you sure?" Kurt asked.

"I'm a big girl, Kurt, getting drunk is not that big a deal," she said, sour-faced.

"We're all just taking this in now," Sam murmured, not making eye contact.

"Alright, all of you are going to listen to me right now." Santana snapped her fingers and all eyes flew to her but Brittany's, which were still on her shoulder crying. "We are young adults. We're in college. We've just gone through hell and back and we're still not even out. We're getting a surprise visit from friends we haven't seen in months - even if it's the last time you ever do it, getting totally shit-faced right now isn't only expected of us by the stupidly-imposed rules the majority of society slaps onto nineteen- and twenty-year-olds, it's almost mandatory."

And then, against her shoulder, there came a half-giggle, half-sob, and the smile that came whenever she made Brittany laugh came without her permission.

So they went to Callbacks.

At first, Santana was really happy with her idea. The place was crowded, but not so much she couldn't hear herself think. Just enough to make her thoughts not quite so loud. There was a pleasant buzz of chatter, and sometimes a NYADA student or two would get up and sing or play an instrument, but for the most part it was just clinking glasses and laughing friends and a nice, warm drink sipping down her throat. She told jokes; she got everyone to laugh. And then Sam did an impression, and Blaine and Tina and Brittany laughed while she and Kurt and Artie groaned. And then Artie started telling them all about film school, and even though she played it off as waiting for a moment for a good dirty joke, she really did love hearing about it. She even loved hearing Sam talk about playing football down in Kentucky, and hearing Tina go on and on about the University of Michigan's amazing theatre department.

And then Brittany started talking about MIT.

Her classes were hard, but she was passing all of them. Santana cheered for her along with the others unironically - it was a big thing for Brittany, she knew, and when Brittany ducked her head and then smiled up at her she was glad she'd let go and been enthusiastic. Brittany's professors varied from really strict (Mr. Hanford) to the most lenient she'd ever had (Mr. Kunoel); her grades ranged from a low D (Mrs. Juvo's class) to a high A (Mr. Kunoel again); and she was making friends. There was a little community theatre not too far away from the campus where she'd started becoming involved, and her roommate, Hadley, was apparently really sweet. Super shy, but really sweet.

"What about romantic relationships?" Tina asked. "Anything juicy?"

When Brittany's smile fell and her eyes flickered to Santana, her heart fell to her gut and started twisting.

"There was this one girl," Brittany admitted, her eyes not leaving Santana, her face contorting with regret when Santana made her smile turn plastic rather than allow it to fade. She'd felt jealousy before and it wasn't something she typically hid - but it had been so long since she'd seen Brittany, and she was supposed to be happy for her, so she did. "She just went through a bad breakup when we met, and I was really lonely, and so we decided to be friends with benefits."

"Dude," Artie said, his hand in front of his mouth.

"But it's like what all the movies say," Brittany rushed to reassure Santana, not even talking to the rest of them anymore. "It just doesn't work. She told me she loved me, and I tried to tell her I didn't, but she was crying and she really was my friend, and so I just kind of… let things happen."

"So you dated?" Blaine clarified, and his voice was the only one that made Santana even break eye contact with Brittany for the briefest of moments.

"Technically," Brittany answered. "But she broke up with me."

"Why?" Sam asked.

And then Brittany was turning red. "I just - um. I don't want to talk about this."

"Sorry it didn't work out, Brit-Brit," Santana said, and instinctively reached out to pat her hand. "So, Tina, what about you?" she switched topics, before Brittany could grab her hand and keep it. "Heard from Mike lately?"

Kurt and Blaine snickered and Tina sent them both glares. She opened her mouth to retort, but then suddenly there was someone tapping on the microphone, and a cheerful voice announced, "Alright, it's Sunday! Is everyone ready for the random singer of the night?"

A cry went up throughout the bar, and Santana turned back to Kurt. "What?"

"They pick a random person to sing a song on Sundays," Kurt explained, his hand going up into the air like several around him, though he showed no sign of interest.

The man with the mic started moving through the crowd. "Put your hands up," Kurt told them all, as the man drew nearer.

"Why?" Santana asked.

"They usually pick ones with their hands down," Kurt hissed, just as the man drew up to Santana and held out his hand and said, "This young lady right here!"

"Excuse me?" Santana raised her eyebrows.

"Care to sing for us, sweetheart?" the man winked and people's hands dropped in disappointment.

"I don't even go to NYADA," Santana told him, crossing her arms.

"Anyone in the bar can be chosen," Kurt and the man said at the same time.

An idea occurred to her - an idea she knew she shouldn't have followed up on, but did anyway. "You know what? Fine. Anderson, come with me." And she grabbed Blaine's good hand from beside her and stood, pulling him with her up to the stage behind the piano.

"This is a solo thing," Mic Man called to her.

"This is a solo," Santana called back. "He's my accompaniment."

"I am?"

Santana gestured to his hand and whispered her next words to him. "Can you play?" She tilted her head towards the piano.

"Well, yeah," Blaine said, and wiggled his fingers. "It's the palm, not my fingers."

"Then play for me," she demanded, and when he raised his eyebrows, she said, "Please."

He nodded approvingly. "What song?"

Santana paused then. She knew what song she'd had in mind, and there was no changing it now; but when she looked back at their booth, Brittany's face was confused, and worried, and she wondered exactly how many things had changed since that phone call when she was in Ohio. Enough that Brittany had had to surprise her with a visit instead of just talking to her like they used to. And there was Brittany, all blonde and lovely and caring and honest and genius and beautiful and _god damn it_.

"When She Loved Me," Santana muttered. "You know it?"

Blaine's face was almost unreadable. "Santana -"

"Please?"

He appraised her for a while longer; long enough that the bar grew restless and their stares grew cold. "Fine."

The gazes of their audience still hadn't warmed to them when Blaine's hands traveled over the piano, or when Santana grabbed the microphone from the man's sweaty hand - but when Santana started singing, there were several people whose eyebrows went up or whose jaws went down.

"_When somebody loved me, everything was beautiful. Every hour we spent together lives within my heart._"

_["Sophomore year, I used to sit in this back row and secretly watch you. I counted the number of times you'd smile at me, and I'd die on days that you didn't."]_

"_And when she was sad, I was there to dry her tears. And when she was happy, so was I. When she loved me._"

_["I miss this place so much. It's where we fell in love, where I could say things with music, when words just weren't enough. And I need to tell you something that I don't know how to say."]_

"_Through the summer and the fall, we had each other - that was all. Just she and I together, like it was meant to be_."

_["Sad songs make me really sad. And I don't want to be sad."]_

"_And when she was lonely, I was there to comfort her. And I knew that she loved me_."

Santana looked over at the booth while Blaine's hands took their time with the slightly musical break. She wished she hadn't, because Brittany looked so stricken she seemed ready to cry - and Santana did a lot of things to a lot of people, but she never, ever wanted to make Brittany cry. But she was close to crying, too. And it was either her fault or Brit's - and it wasn't hers.

"_So the years went by; l I stayed the same, but she began to drift away_."

_["I haven't been a good girlfriend to you. I can't come home on the weekends and pretend that things are the way they were, because they aren't. And I don't want to be like all those other long-distance relationships that hang in there for a few months and then break up when someone eventually cheats or things get weird."]_

"_I was left alone. Still, I waited for the day when she'd say 'I will always love you'_."

_["I would never cheat on you. "]_

"_Lonely and forgotten, never thought she'd look my way…_"

_["I know. And I would never cheat on you either. Let's just do the mature thing here, okay? This is not an official breakup. Let's just be honest that long-distance relationships are almost impossible to maintain, because both people are rarely getting what they need, especially at our age."]_

"_She smiled at me and held me just like she used to do._"

_["This sounds a lot like a breakup to me."]_

"_Like she loved me… when she loved me_."

_["You know I will always love you the most. "]_

"_When somebody loved me, everything was beautiful_."

_["I love you, too."]_

"_Every hour we spent together lives within my heart_."

And Brittany was there, and Santana was only across the room, and how much would it hurt to just reach out and -?

"_When she loved me_."

Santana didn't even have time to take the microphone away from her mouth before everyone was applauding. She did, however, have time to wipe at hers eyes while Blaine was finishing up the music, and everyone was too busy to see her, really - everyone but Brittany.

Brittany had been staring at her the whole time. She wondered exactly what she'd said, what she'd done. Because Santana thought she didn't love her anymore, and the last time they'd heard each others' voices, she'd asked to get back together, and Santana had been the one to say no. If anything, Brittany should have sang that song, not Santana - was it because of her talking about Janie? If it was because of Janie, maybe if she'd just told why she'd dumped her, Santana wouldn't feel like that.

She was confused, but she knew Santana. She'd said something, done something she shouldn't have, and Santana honestly thought she didn't love her anymore. And she couldn't be more wrong.

So as soon as Santana stepped off the stage and handed the man the mic again, Brittany left her seat, not seeing how everyone else at the booth was staring both at her and Santana (with the exception of Kurt, who was watching Blaine closely) and instead making her way across the bar to the dark-haired girl, who had stopped moving when she saw Brittany coming towards her.

Brittany grabbed her hand and leaned in and asked, "Come with me?"

Santana nodded mutely, so Brittany pulled her along. The bar was full of prying eyes and straining ears, and thought she pulled Blaine aside for a moment and said, "We're going for a walk," she never completely stopped. Because she was pulling Santana along, she squeezed her hand, like she used to, because she wanted to - Santana's hand felt just as good as she remembered, but Santana wasn't happy. She promised she'd try to be happy.

And then they were outside, and instead of prying eyes they got thousands of open windows, and instead of straining ears they got strangers walking quickly on the streets, their heads down, their feet louder than their breath - which was saying something.

And Brittany stopped, because it was New York, and she could hear the clatter of the people and the gunshots in the bars and the steel cutting skin and she… no, that was just what she'd been told. She didn't hear it. Not really.

She looked at Santana, and she was stunning. Like she always was.

"Why did you sing that song?" Brittany asked her gently, softly, because as loud as New York was, they were outside, and only a few distant conversation and doors opening and closing to release or hide the sounds within were audible besides how Santana was biting her lip and holding her breath.

"Because I like it and I'm a good singer," Santana said, tossing her hair back with a flick of her head and not being convincing at all.

"Santana, you promised me you'd try to be happy up here," Brittany murmured. She squeezed Santana's hands again when the other girl's grip loosened - the last thing she wanted was to have her pull away completely.

"I don't remember that," Santana said tightly.

_Santana squeezed Brittany to her closely. "I don't think I was lonely," she answered honestly. "I think I was sad, but I don't think I was lonely."_

_Something different was in Brittany's smile when she pulled back to look at her, and said, "Good. Next time try not to be sad."_

"I don't think it was in so many words," Brittany allowed, "But it was there. It was a promise. I told you, next time try not to be sad. Are you even trying?"

"Of course I'm trying!" Santana snapped. "Brittany, we literally _just_ told you what all's happened! If you think I'm not trying -"

"But you don't look at me like you're trying," Brittany argued, grabbing Santana's other hand so quickly Santana didn't have time to hold it away. The jolt of her skin meeting Santana's was familiar and almost comforting, had it not also been desperate. "If you were actually trying, you'd look at me like you knew I loved you. Like you used to."

"Wait, wait," Santana said, and she pulled her hands away from Brittany, smoothly but with enough force Brittany had to let her go. "Like I used to what? Like I used to look at you? Like I used to know you loved me? Like I used to love you?"

"Any of those," Brittany said. "All of those."

"I told you I'd always love you the most," Santana muttered, and suddenly she was looking anywhere but at Brittany. Her eyelashes had begun to clump together like they did when they were her last defense against tears, and they seemed to glitter when the streetlights around them reflected off the saltwater they'd gathered. Her eyes themselves were dark, like they always were; dark, and flickering around, because her head was still but her eyes couldn't be. They glistened and they held tears and they blinked them back but couldn't fight; her voice was as tense and as shaky as the muscles in her face were. They wanted to pull against each other, they wanted to crumple, but Santana wouldn't let them - so she shook. And it was clear that she was shaking, because she was in such high contrast; her skin, when not cast in shadow from the lights of the bar windows behind her, shone golden and dark, and her hair, pulled back loosely into a bun, still looked as soft as silk. But she was mostly a silhouette. The parts of her Brittany saw were just as bright as they always were, even if they were darker in color; but she was disappearing, fading to black.

"So do you still? Because I still love you."

Santana looked up, and the defined curve of her cheek was outlined in the black of shadow. It wasn't even fully dark out yet; how did she manage to look like she was slipping into it? But her cheek was only as defined as that when she was smiling; however, as soon as Brittany realized that, it was gone again and her face was flat.

"Do you?" she asked. "Because what you said, about the girl. Our relationship started as sex with no feelings too, remember? And I know that how we officially came out as a couple was a lot different from what you said about this girl, but -"

"Santana, our relationship started as best friends," Brittany corrected her softly. "And we had sex after that, remember? We were best friends having sex. Janie was never like that for me." Santana shook her head once and dropped it. "Besides, you broke up with me because you didn't want to do long-distance. Janie broke up with me because I said your name in bed, which, if you ask m-"

"What?"

Brittany stopped when Santana's voice cracked. "What?"

"You said my name instead of hers?"

"Yeah." Brittany was confused, but only for a moment - because not a second after she answered, Santana was smiling again. It was a sad smile, but it was a smile, and it was a real one. "And obviously she knew who you were to me, I talk about you all the time. So she just kind of dumped me on the spot and left."

"But why did you never tell me you were dating?" Santana asked; her voice was shaking, but differently. Almost with excitement.

Brittany shrugged. "The same reason you didn't tell your Grandmother we were dating. I was scared that you wouldn't approve or love me anymore."

Santana's smile slipped, but Brittany didn't think she looked sad. And then she started talking.

"People in the army… People in the army, they do more by the time I wake up than I do in a day. That's what my Nana always told me whenever I was either being lazy or complaining about being too busy. And it always made me shut up and do what I was supposed to. But I am _so_ tired of listening to that. You know? They're going to be held to a different standard because the war they're fighting is different. Their war is to conquer, to protect, to defend and to annihilate. My war is for the sole purpose of making sure I can still wake up in the morning to make you smile so people can tell me I've not done enough. But people in the army, they get guns, and they get training, and they get uniforms and bombs and grenades and they're pushed to their physical limit every day. All I've got to fight back with are my words, and my fists, and what other people throw at me. But I can win a whole lot easier, too, and that's the thing; when you've got nothing to lose but for one person you love more than you'll ever love anything again, it's the easiest thing in the world to win. But I could die just as easily; except the people fighting me aren't fighting because someone strapped a gun to them and forced them to fight for Queen and Country or whatever the bullcrap they feed them is. The people fighting me are fighting because they hate me. And it's tiring, and I've seen injuries, and I've been wounded, and I've seen a fellow soldier fall, and all that crap they tell you causes PTSD. Just not in a way that anybody is going to respect. I just… it's so fucking stupid! They cheer on people who don't want to fight and hand them all these huge, bloody weapons, and then they tell me that my walking around alive the way I am is an abomination. They're still going to tell me that people in the army do more by the time I wake up than I do in a day; but if I wake up in the morning, and you're the first thing I remember touching, I don't care how much they've done. If I wake you up and you smile at me, or you cuddle back into me, or even if you woke up before me and just tell me Good Morning, I've done so much already, and I've not killed anyone in the process. And they're wrong. All of them. They're wrong for telling me I am and for telling me I've not done enough because if I've done it for you - if I've done_anything_ for you - I'll have always done enough."

Brittany blinked. Half of that had been a genuine confession, relevant to them and what they were discussing; but Brittany knew that because she'd brought up her Grandmother, Santana's head head twisted around that. So, to clarify, she asked tentatively, "Because you love me?"

Santana laughed and nodded and wiped at the tears that had fallen sometime while she spoke, and Brittany mirrored her. "Because I love you."

"And you know I love you too?"

"Just don't let me forget," Santana whispered, and then she stepped out of the shadow so Brittany could see every blessed, minuscule detail of her, and kissed her.

* * *

"So, to be clear," Rachel said, her hands folded in front of her and resting on the table, "What you're suggesting is that we don't enter a relationship, don't contact each other as if we are when you go back to L.A., but whenever we do see each other, we can sleep together?"

"Pretty much, yeah," Cooper said, sitting back. "Meanwhile, what you're suggesting is that we pretend this never happened to our friends, and continue sleeping together behind their backs. But you said nothing about relationships or distance."

"Don't get me wrong," Rachel said, pulling her hands back, "I'm certainly not ashamed of it. But you're Blaine's brother, and to top it off, the age difference -"

"So you want to keep the fact that we slept together a secret," Cooper said, waving her off. "Fine, fine. I'm okay with that."

"And not just because it'd be getting back at Blaine for not telling you about… what happened?" she pressed.

Cooper paused, then sighed when he met her challenging eyes. "Yeah, I get it. We keep it a secret. But on top of that, we keep sleeping together."

"So we're going with my plan?"

"But hold on a sec," Cooper raised a finger. "I think mine is the better one. I'll agree to keeping quiet, so long as you agree that this is purely for recreational purposes. No relationship -"

"None," Rachel agreed.

"- and we don't act like we've suddenly become besties and text each other or something all the time -"

"That's okay," Rachel told him.

"- but when the time does come where we see each other again and it's possible, I think continuing to see each other in private is what we need."

"I'm not opposed to that," Rachel said. "My only question is whether this is exclusive or not."

Cooper considered it for a minute while Rachel studied the mussed hair on his head and felt proud that she'd been the one to tangle it so. "No, I don't think so," he finally replied. "I think that implies a relationship, and, like we've both said, we don't want that."

"So if one of us happens to enter an exclusive relationship?"

"We stop, obviously," Cooper snorted. "If I get a girlfriend I don't want to cheat on her, and if you get a boyfriend I don't want to be the 'other man'."

"Right." Rachel nodded. "Okay. So, we're basically going to change nothing about how we interact with one another, until we're alone, and then we sleep together and keep it a secret?"

"Yeah."

There was silence then. Rachel felt so… strange. Sure, she and Brody's relationship hadn't been exclusive by any means - looking back, she'd been in an open, non-exclusive relationship with a male prostitute - but she'd never actually had what Santana would lovingly call a "fuck buddy". The arrangement was definitely a first she never thought she'd have.

She could still remember the days she judged Santana for sleeping around. Thinking about what she was doing now, she almost wanted to laugh.

"So…" she trailed off. "When we sleep together, are there kisses, or is it just…" she gestured wildly and then set her hands down, embarrassed.

Cooper looked amused. "We kissed last night, didn't we?"

"Well, yeah," Rachel responded, her face flushing. "I just didn't know if that would continue."

Cooper shrugged. "If you don't want it to -"

"No, it's fine," she settled, before hesitating to continue with, "This is really weird."

"Yes, it is," Cooper chuckled, and then she was chuckling with him.

And then her phone rang. She jumped at the sound, sent Cooper an apologetic glance, and then stood and nearly ran to the bedroom, fishing the phone out of the pocket of the pants she'd been wearing off the floor and answering without looking, because she was almost out of time. "Hello?"

"Rach, it's me," Blaine's voice filled her ear, and at the sound her stomach clenched. "I'm really sorry we didn't call you or anything, but did you get our texts?"

"No, I'm sorry," Rachel said, bringing her hand up to brush her bangs out of her face. "Well, I might have, but I haven't checked my phone lately. I've been preoccupied."

"Oh, jeez, I'm sorry," he said, and he sounded sincere. "I totally forgot you were with Cooper. Is he being too much of a pain in the ass?"

"He's a handful, but I can handle him," Rachel responded, and turned to look at Cooper, who was walked up behind her to listen. "So what did your texts say?"

"Well, for once, Brittany, Sam, Tina and Artie have all come to visit us as a surprise," Blaine said nonchalantly, as if it were no big deal.

"What?!" Rachel squeaked. "When?"

"Um…" Blaine apparently checked something. "About six hours ago? They brought all four of us presents. Right now we're on our way back from Callback's. If you wanted to come to our apartment, we were going to open our gifts."

"Why were you at a bar?" Rachel demanded. "Why the hell did you take Santana to a bar so soon after -"

"Relax, it was her idea, honey," Blaine made his voice soothing, even over the phone somehow. "We're all okay and we're coming home. And something tells me that Santana's feeling better than she was before we came."

"Is she drunk out of her mind?"

"No, actually. Unless you count Brittany as an alcoholic beverage."

Rachel didn't understand it for a few seconds. And then she did. "_Oh_. Oh."

"Yeah. She sang When She Loved Me at because she was chosen for the -"

"Yeah, I remember. Go on."

"Right. And then Brittany took her outside and they came back in and they were holding hands and smiling and don't tell her I noticed, but Santana hadn't had her hair covering her neck when she went out, but she did when she came back."

"Are you suggesting Brittany gave Santana a hickey?"

"She had more than enough time."

Rachel shook her head. "Nice, Blaine. Why did you even go to Callbacks? Why did Santana suggest it?"

"I'm not sure. First, we told them everything, and then everyone - literally, everyone - was crying, and Santana was just like "Let's go get drunk!" But we didn't get drunk, we just kind of talked about college and our lives and caught each other up and stuff. And now we're coming home."

Rachel reached up to get her bangs out of the way again (she needed to brush her hair, she hadn't yet), but Cooper's hand was already there, and when she looked at him he smiled, tucking the offending hair behind her ear and just letting his fingers knot themselves in her tangles. She bit her lip and smiled. "Okay. When do you want us to be there?"

"Whenever, really," Blaine told her. "I think we're going to have a semi-party. Tina's never been one for high alcohol tolerance and she's more than a little tipsy, and she seems dead-set on the idea of Truth or Dare and actually getting drunk like we were supposed to."

"Good god, we're in high school again," Rachel giggled. "Alright, we'll be there. Don't start without us."

* * *

Opening presents was like Christmas, except none of them had to pretend to like crappy presents, because none of the presents were crappy.

Tina gave out her presents first. She handed Blaine one of the original Marvel comic books (Santana forgot which one), and when Sam's jaw dropped she handed him one, too. They both kissed her cheeks and she rolled her eyes at them. And then she handed Santana a strobe light for her room or whatever room she wanted - and while it wasn't the most thoughtful gift, it wasn't thoughtless. It wasn't something Santana had thought about herself, but she liked it. Tina gave Kurt a suit - a proper suit, dark and black and sharp, English cut, with a dark red tie and a stark-white collared shirt for under it. Everyone was surprised when he opened it, and he went to put it on immediately, disappearing into the bathroom while Tina and Artie pulled together to give Rachel two DVDs - both of which had been Tina's idea but put together by Artie, though only Artie's was wrapped. One was her performance of Don't Rain On My Parade (she put it on immediately) and the other was her accepting the award for MVP and the hug that followed.

And since Artie had already begun, he went ahead and handed out his presents. To Blaine, he gave a bag - Blaine pulled the fancy tissue paper out of the top with a smirk and pulled out a notebook full of completely blank staffs for writing sheet music and a stamp group of clefs, time/key signatures, and individual notes. Blaine actually clapped with excitement when he got it, and Artie told him he looked forward for the music he wrote with it to be the soundtrack to his first movie.

And then Artie handed Santana her gift. She opened the box and there was blue fabric staring at her - and when she held it up, she found she had to stand, because suddenly there was cloth unfolding down to her ankles in the form of a deep blue gown. It had a high neck and no sleeves, and the waistline was on the middle of her stomach, and it was clearly the kind of dress that would flare out if she turned. She looked at Artie in surprise and he shrugged. Usually when people bought her clothing, it was informal, red or black, and this was both formal and a blue that didn't quite qualify as dark. When asked what it was for, he said simply, "I don't know, it looked like you'd like it." She didn't tell him she did.

Kurt came back out just in time for Artie's gift to him. Artie gave him a box full of Broadway musicals that had never actually been made into movies, gotten off of youtube and edited together to the best of his ability. Kurt laughed and accepted it with grace - not that Blaine noticed. He was too busy staring.

And then Sam clapped and said he wanted to go. He gave Blaine a Lord of the Rings box set, and that managed to pull out of his Kurt-is-so-pretty trance for a little bit. But only a little bit - long enough to thank him - and then he went right back to his eyes travelling over the suit Kurt wore and then Kurt's freshly-washed face repeatedly, his eyes growing steadily more narrowed and more golden.

And Sam gave Rachel a dress box. He apologized because it seemed unoriginal because of the clothes Santana and Kurt had gotten, but he'd seen it when shopping with his sister and thought it was perfect for her. She grinned and told him it was no big deal, and Cooper, sitting behind her and apparently trying not to be too loud, leaned forward just a bit and said something that nobody but Rachel could catch or thought to try and hear - but the corner of Rachel's mouth twitched up that little bit more, and Santana looked at how Cooper looked at her and how she opened it, glancing back but not turning her head, and she wanted to laugh out loud and simultaneously vomit. She knew what secretly sleeping with someone looked like. But she said nothing, and Rachel opened it, and it was a cocktail dress. It was cream-colored and the sleeves were netting - the same netting that came down to her ankles, when the actual skirt only came down to mid-thigh. And the netting was designed curiously, and when one looked closely, it was centered around thousands of tiny white_ R_ squealed, leapt across the circle to kiss his cheek, and then proclaimed she would go put it on - Santana didn't miss how she threw a look at Cooper before disappearing behind the curtain.

Sam then handed Santana a set of decorative knives. She nodded approvingly and flashed him a peace sign with a dead-pan expression; Blaine actually saw and snickered, but then Kurt moved and his attention was reclaimed.

And Sam handed Kurt a scarf. Kurt took it curiously, and when he identified it his eyes lit up; he started rattling about it while thanking Sam, but nobody actually paid attention, with the possible exception of Blaine.

And then Brittany said it was her turn.

The first thing out of her bag was a small cone with an elastic band, painted pink, sparkly, and with a yellow fur trim. She put it on Kurt and declared him her unicorn once again; he looked so proud he could have been preening.

Just then, like Kurt had, Rachel reappeared just in time for her gift. Kurt saw her and clasped his hands together and sighed and said she looked absolutely stunning; Cooper was silent, but Rachel looked at him more than anyone. Santana hid the dress behind her for fear Kurt would make her wear it. But that didn't matter to Brittany, because she handed her a stuffed, felt microphone, and said, "I know you love to sing and you're a good singer, but it gets annoying somethings and cloth muffles your voice." To which Rachel looked properly taken aback and everyone else laughed loudly.

And then Brittany looked at Blaine and apologized, and when he asked, "For what?" she handed him a box. And when Blaine opened it, it was a full-body dog suit.

Kurt made it put it on. Blaine didn't stare at him with so much mesmerism as a warning, but he did it anyway. And when he came back, he was dressed like a weiner dog,all brown, and everybody - seriously, everybody - laughed when they saw that it was too long for him, and Cooper snapped a picture. "I hate you," he told everyone. "The others get all these beautiful clothes, and I get a dog suit."

"I'm sorry," Brittany said again, hanging her head.

"Don't be, it's adorable," Santana and Blaine told her at the same time, and then Blaine flushed and sat down behind Kurt, away from the view of peoples' phones, and Santana just shook her head pityingly.

And then it was Santana's turn, and to everybody's complete astonishment, Brittany pulled out of her bag a huge bouquet of all different sorts and colors of flowers, a gigantic box of chocolates, and a candle-holder in the shape of a tree, that looked to hold at least ten different candles on the branches. And, to top it off, she pulled out a tiny table that she unfolded in front of Santana before handing her the bouquet (it smelled a lot like Brittany herself, which Santana obviously found nice), setting the candle holder down on that table, putting the chocolates on it, and then reaching into her bag once more and pulling out a box of candles and a box of matches.

"Brit," Santana breathed, looking at all of it, while everyone watched on in contemplative silence, "What's all this?"

"This is an apology," Brittany told her, smiling. "For everything I messed up doing, for everything you messed up not doing, or the other way around. And then also candles. It worked for Kurt and Blaine," she defended, when Santana raised her eyebrows.

The couple in question laughed along with Santana. "No, Brit," Santana shook her head. "You - this is really sweet."

"Well, yeah," Brittany said, like it was the easiest thing in the world. "It's from me and I love you."

"Brit," Santana sighed, and she actually didn't notice that Kurt was pulling Blaine past the curtain into his bedroom.

* * *

"What is it?" Blaine asked, unzipping the dog costume as soon as they were behind the curtain. "This thing is so hot, I swear -"

"What Brittany did," Kurt said, and he was breathless, and his eyes were glittering, and his lip was trembling, and so Blaine stopped what he was doing and listened as closely as he could. "She apologized. I haven't done that."

"You've said you're sorry, baby," Blaine smiled at him, moving forward and going to kiss him.

"No," Kurt said, and put his hands on Blaine's shoulders to push him back, and Blaine let him, a bit hurt that he would. "It's - I've done so much, you know? I've… do you remember what you said when we were about to sleep together for the first time since we got back together?"

_"Can I ask you a question?"_

_"Of course."_

_"Can I kiss you?"_

_"Can I ask you a question?"_

_"Um, yeah."_

_"Why do you think you need to ask my permission to kiss me?"_

_Blaine's eyebrows furrowed. "Because making a romantic advance when it's non-consensual is not only extremely wrong but way too creepy for me to ever consider actually doing?"_

"Yes," Blaine said, knowing exactly what he was talking about.

"I should have realized," Kurt said, and Blaine reached out to hold him, but Kurt caught his rest and just held it there. "I should have known, have talked to you, have tried figuring things out. But I just let things go, bit after bit, never tried to understand with all the clues you gave me. And your wishes, how you wish you could sleep beside me because you want to and not because you're tired or drained, and that you didn't have to sacrifice your health for me, Blaine, that's not right. And it is my fault - let me finish!" Kurt dropped Blaine's wrist when he opened his mouth to protest. "I never talked to you about triggers, okay? Like I did about you with Santana and Rachel. If I'd done that, if I'd just done that, you'd have known that I trusted you, and we wouldn't have had to find out what your trigger is like we just did. And for months after we got together I just assumed everything was going to be okay and never mentioned again, and I didn't even tell you I read your journal. And a little while after that I promised I wouldn't but I did, anyway, and I know I said it was because you wouldn't let me understand but the truth is that I hadn't tried to understand like I should have. And I'm really, really sorry, because all of this is my fault, and I love you to pieces, and I know we're never going to have met in a grocery store, but I want all of that, too."

"Kurt," Blaine tried to say, but nothing came out.

Kurt was pale, and quivering, and Blaine wanted to try and just hold him, but every time he moved Kurt fought against it, and he couldn't make himself force himself on Kurt like that - even if Kurt was wiping at his eyes and talking through his hands, and had to take breaths in between sentences.

"A-And you, you're amazing," Kurt made it sound like an oath. "And it's my fault you have such low self-esteem, and I held you down in the shower, and I know I said I was sorry, but it's not the same as really apologizing. And I want to apologize, but I messed up so much, and there's no way to apologize for that -"

"Kurt," Blaine stopped him, putting his hands firmly on each side of Kurt's face, making him stop talking and look at Blaine, teary-eyed and hyperventilating. "I'm going to kiss you now, okay?"

"Why?" Kurt mouthed, and Blaine kissed him anyway.

It was different from any of their other kisses. For the first time, it was Kurt that was unsure, Kurt that wasn't fully behind it. But he was there in a way Blaine hadn't been lately, so Blaine kissed him just a little harder, pushing his tongue against Kurt's lips so he parted them and then tracing them slowly, tasting him, and when Kurt's tongue tentatively joined his he pulled back just enough to say, "I want to do this. I'm comfortable doing this, Kurt. I trust you -" he pecked his lips against, and then met his eyes, and said, "and I love you. You're forgiven, and I appreciate that you realize what you've done wrong - but I've messed up too, okay? It's not all your fault. You're not the only one whose choices have affected us."

When Blaine pulled away just a bit and took Kurt's hand instead, leading him over to the dresser and pulling out the old ring box, Kurt's breath caught. But Blaine opened it and handed Kurt the ring for the second time in their lives, smiling like he had been the last time, and asked, "What does this mean?"

"That we're going to get married?" Kurt asked, confused, letting Blaine slide it on his finger.

"Mm," Blaine confirmed. "And that means that I love you and will not matter what you do or what happens to us. Okay?" He looked up and grinned that grin of his - still in his stupid dog costume.

Kurt spent another half a minute just studying his face and slowly letting his heartbeat slow to its normal rhythm in Blaine's arms before he murmured, "Okay," and flexed his finger.

* * *

"Blaine!"

Kurt and Blaine were on the couch, Kurt's right leg up against the back of it and his left leg over the side, his arms around Blaine's stomach and his head on his fiance's. Blaine was laying on Kurt, between his legs, leaning back so his head rested just below his chin, his hands over his boyfriend's, and Brittany had let him take off the dog suit an hour ago. Every now and then Kurt would kiss his head lightly or nuzzle his nose into Blaine's curls and just breathe him in. When that happened, Blaine would twisted his neck and kiss whatever part of Kurt he could reach. The ring was still on Kurt's finger, but nobody looked enough to see it but Blaine, who would occasionally rub his thumb over it lightly.

Santana was lying on the floor at the foot of the couch, between it and the coffee table, her leg in the air and her ankle twisting as she made infinity symbols with her foot. Brittany was sitting down at the end of her girlfriend, massaging her free foot gently. Artie was in his wheelchair, parked beside the chair where Tina sat, her legs draped over Sam's shoulders because he was sitting in front of her on the floor. Sometimes he'd unexpectedly tickle her feet, and she'd kick somewhere she hadn't already kicked each time he did. Rachel and Cooper had somehow managed to curl up on a mass of blankets together, even if they weren't actually physically touching.

The game of Truth or Dare they were playing was a lot different from the one they'd played in high school. For one, Tina was easily the drunkest of them all, and she was nowhere near as drunk as she had been then. Every once in a while someone would have a drink and throughout the night they'd gotten progressively lazier, but while their laziness grew, so did their desire to do something. It was contradictory, but it was what was happening. And Cooper was playing with them, so it wasn't surprising that he and Blaine had told plenty of embarrassing stories about each other when answering their Truths. Other than that, the game had been sexually uneventful, which they all knew wasn't the norm for this game among college students, but they didn't care.

"Yeah?" Blaine responded to Tina's shouting his name.

"Truth or Dare?" she asked him, before she shrieked when Sam tickled her and kicked the side of his head.

"Truth," he responded. He'd just done two dares in a row, and while brushing Rachel's teeth for Brittany's amusement and letting Sam give him a piggyback ride for Artie's wasn't bad at all, he was comfortable where he was and didn't want to move.

"Um, okay," Tina addressed him, still giggling. "What is one thing that you are Kurt have done 'in the bedroom' that nobody in here knows?"

"Good luck with that," Santana spoke up.

"Yeah, go ahead," Rachel added, and both girls chuckled quietly between themselves.

"Alright," Blaine said. "That's not even a challenge. Kurt, would you show them your hand?"

Kurt raised his hand from Blaine's nonchalantly. "Sure," he said smugly.

"Do you have some hand kink you're going to demonstrate?" Santana asked. "Because I'm really -"

"THERE'S A RING ON IT!" Tina screeched, and the effect was instantaneous. She bolted out of the chair and leapt over Rachel and Cooper's bodies on the ground. Santana and Rachel both let out a startled yelp of "What?!" and sat up, straight-backed, while Sam and Cooper looked at each other with smirks and laughs on their lips. Artie let out a whoop of "You white peoples always try'na get hitched too young!" and Brittany asked, "Wait, they're not married already?" among the chaos.

Tina stood where Santana's head had just been and grabbed Kurt's hand, holding it close to her face and examining it carefully. Santana clambered to her feet next to her and slapped Blaine's leg on her way with a "Why didn't you tell me?!" before joining Tina, and Rachel's scream of "WHEN DID THIS HAPPEN?!" stayed with her before she was leaning over Kurt's head to see the gold band on his slender finger. "Ohmygod, _Kurt_!" she squeaked, and Tina agreed with her in the form of an occupied grunt.

"I'm actually not angry about you not telling me about this," Cooper remarked easily, helping Sam to his feet and wheeling Artie over to the group of people.

"Dude, I'm your best man, right?" Sam asked, and that was when Cooper's face fell.

"No, _I'm_ best man," Cooper said pointedly, "_Right_, Squirt?"

"All y'all are crazy, I'm best man," Artie decided.

"I wanna be best man," Brittany pouted.

"You can be a bridesmaid, Brit," Santana told her with a huge grin.

"You've gotta let me plan the wedding!" Rachel demanded.

"Maybe Blaine wants a maid of honor, not a best man," Tina told the boys arguing behind her. "That would be _me_."

"The ring is really pretty, but the black diamond is depressing," Brittany told them, once she'd gotten her first look at it.

"It's to represent Blackbird," Kurt told her, and as soon as he spoke everybody's voices died down. "It's an onyx."

"Why Blackbird?" Artie asked.

"Isn't that the song that made you realize you were in love with him, Blaine?" Cooper asked. "I remember you texting me about it, all excited because you finally kissed a boy and -"

"That's so _cute_!" Rachel began jumping up and down with her hands at her sides like she did, her voice high with excitement - and Cooper only looked at her with fondness.

"Yeah, that was it," Blaine told him, and once again everyone fell silent. "Um, Rachel, I proposed a couple months ago -"

"Months," Santana repeated scathingly. "You didn't tell me for _months_?"

"How did you keep it a secret that long?" Brittany asked.

"Can I film the wedding?" Artie asked.

"Kurt, your bridesmaid dresses have to be pink, I look best in pink," Rachel ordered.

"Maybe Blaine will want bridesmaids," Tina reminded her.

"Nah, Blaine's going to want best men and Lady Hummel's the one who'll want bridesmaids," Santana said observantly. "And because of that, Rachel's going to end up being maid of honor, and Sam's going to end up best man -"

"I beg your pardon," Cooper interrupted.

"No, she's right," Sam smiled cheerily. "I -"

"No, if anyone -"

"I think Lord Tubbington should be best man -"

"He does look good in a tux, Brit -"

"I -"

"We -"

"How -?"

And they were lost in a flood of questions and celebration and love and people smothered them with hugs and congratulations and they let themselves drown in it - but they refused to stop cuddling on that couch.

* * *

It's amazing how fast news travels.

One second they're having a semi-drunk Truth or Dare game, and the next things they know people from Ohio and California and all over the place are calling because they heard about the bar shooting and want to know if people are okay. And then they're calling again because they want to congratulate Santana and Brittany on getting back together. And then they're calling again because Kurt and Blaine finally told Burt they were engaged and he sent it to literally everyone in his inbox and they're freaking out because "we knew you'd make it!"

Well, really, it's more than just four seconds. It's more like four days. The first day they wake up with a hangover and they're woken up by someone pounding on the door. When they open it, it's a camera crew, wanting to ask them questions about the shooting. Rachel's arm had started hurting again and she'd had it in her sling when she answered the door, so they got their gruesome After pictures they wanted - and normally Rachel (and Cooper, standing behind her protectively) would have been all for it… except for the fact that her arm was throbbing and her head was pounding and she was hungover just enough to be pissed off at everyone and so she slammed the door in their faces.

But they were still on the news, and Mr. Schue saw, flipped out, and called to demand that they tell him whether or not everyone was okay. He wasn't satisfied until he'd talked to both Rachel and Santana, and then both girls had to calm him down on speaker. Neither of them could find it in them to be annoyed with him, though Santana tried.

Of course, after Mr. Schue called there was Marley and Kitty, who'd been having a sleepover, calling to make sure everyone (particularly Blaine) was alright. And then Jake, then Ryder, and then Unique (Kurt stayed on the phone with her for a lot longer than necessary), and then Joe, and then Quinn and Mercedes phoned at the same time and got anxious when both of their calls were dropped because of the timing. When Mike called, Blaine assured him of just how okay they were and then soundlessly handed it to Tina.

(She thanked him later. Much later. Six hours later. When she got off the damn phone with Mike.)

And then it was time to sleep, and Brittany stayed with Santana, and Blaine stayed with Kurt, and Sam took Blaine's bed and Tina took Rachel's and Artie slept on the couch (he insisted, he adamantly refused any and all bed suggestions because it was just more convenient to be that close to his chair), and then because all the other beds were full and they could tolerate each other, Rachel and Cooper was stuck with the hotel room the others had booked.

It was safe to say that while they fought against it for the sake of appearances, neither of them minded. Blaine kept apologizing for it until they finally just had to tell him to shut up because it didn't matter.

And then people called because 'Brittana' went facebook-official. Their favorite call was probably Quinn's:

"It took you long enough, Santana. This whole time I was worried you'd actually show up at my door with a moving van."

"Shut up, Quinn."

"Why would you -"

"Because I slept with her at Mr. Schues wedding."

"Really?"

"Yeah."

"Huh. Does that mean Quinn's a lesbian?"

"It means I'm experimenting."

"So the next time we see each other can we have a three-way?"

And then they actually arranged a visit.

Needless to say, when the phone calls had finally stopped coming, they forced Kurt and Blaine to sit down in front of the computer and Skype with Burt. Before anyone could even say anything, Santana in the background shouted at Burt, "YOUR SON'S ENGAGED" before running off to join her girlfriend in front of the TV.

That got the conversation started on a very direct path.

And then Burt got way too over-excited and the next thing they knew Mercedes was squealing across the phone and Carole was calling about wedding plans and Blaine's parents were calling to see if it was true.

They didn't even call Blaine. They called Cooper.

When he told them it was, they hung up.

When Cooper told Blaine, he sat there in silence until Kurt hugged him, and then he started to cry.

But that, too, passed, and so did packing boxes and moving them. Because Kurt would be damned if he let all this valuable, willing labor go undone by equally valuable, willing laborers. He gave everyone tasks and they'd finished the packing by the time the first full day ended. And they'd moved half the boxes by the end of the second, and by the third they'd gotten everything unpacked and Kurt was fully moved in with Blaine and Santana was stuck with Rachel again.

After that, they spent the next two days doing everything they possibly could in New York City.

And then, somehow, Kurt and Blaine found themselves alone.

Santana had taken Brittany out to dinner, Rachel and Artie had gone to see another Broadway show, and Sam and Tina had gone to catch a movie at the cinema - leaving the two boys alone. (They doubted it was unintentional.) And they discovered this when Kurt looked up from his phone and looked around and said, "Wait, nobody's here."

Blaine looked up from his Spots magazine and smiled. "Yeah, nobody's been here for, like, an hour, honey."

"You're kidding me," Kurt said, dropping the phone to his lap, a look of total shock crossing his face. "So for the past hour I've been whining about constantly surrounded via text to Adam when I could have been having sex with you?"

Blaine's face was blank for a moment, and then he looked ready to burst in guffaws. "That sentence changed direction rather quickly."

"So did my train of thought!" Kurt exclaimed, tossing the phone down where he'd just been sitting and standing up.

"So we're going to have sex now?" Blaine reaffirmed, raising an eyebrow and fighting back the laughter that was bubbling into his voice, grinning with amusement as Kurt crossed the distance between them and plucked the magazine out of his hands. "I was reading that."

"You're really bad at this whole 'boyfriend' thing," Kurt muttered, dropping the magazine to the coffee table and placing his leg on the other side of Blaine's.

"Yeah, but I'm great at being a fiance," Blaine said cheekily - but Kurt didn't miss how his eyes flickered down and then back up, so he put his knees on the couch cushions on either side of Blaine and sank down onto them, letting himself lean forward until his hands were on the back of the couch, the only things holding him up so he didn't just crash onto Blaine, whose face was mere inches away.

"We haven't had sex in a _week_, Blaine," Kurt pointed out.

"We haven't been _alone_ in a week, Kurt," Blaine countered.

"You're so amused right now!" Kurt teased, and Blaine snickered, his eyes crinkling at the corners and his smirk widening. "Seriously!"

"You're very amusing," Blaine awarded him.

"Blaaaiiiiine," Kurt whined, his voice low, and he purposefully made it sound rough; Blaine's smile slipped just a little bit into a different type of smirk.

"Am I frustrating you?" Blaine teased, leaning forward so the tip of his nose just grazed the tip of Kurt's. "Mr. I-haven't-been-laid-in-a-week?"

"You haven't been laid in a week either," Kurt reminded him. "I just want to change that."

"Mm," Blaine nodded, his face falsely thoughtful. "And if that should include pleasuring yourself immensely, it's just an added bonus, right?"

"Shut _up_, Blaine, oh my _god_," Kurt groaned, letting his face fall forward so his forehead rested on Blaine's. "You are totally killing the mood."

"I can fix that." Blaine's voice was suddenly lower, thicker, and Kurt looked back up and Blaine's smirk was cocky now, not humored, and his eyes were narrower and his lips were pursed.

"Are you going to kiss me _now_?" Kurt asked, more bemused than he had been before.

"You're killing the mood," Blaine sang tauntingly back at him.

"Shut up and kiss me," Kurt sighed, exasperated.

"No," Blaine said, his tone back to normal and his grin just as playful as before. "You're the one who -"

"For Pete's sake," Kurt curtailed him and let his elbows bend so his face practically crashed into Blaine's. The moment their lips touched, everything about Blaine's demeanor changed; he was no longer joking, he was no longer kidding, he was shoving his tongue in Kurt's mouth and taking in a huge, deep breath as he did so, his hand coming up automatically to cup the side of Kurt's face and bring it closer, their noses nuzzles, slotting together like practiced puzzle pieces. Blaine's mouth was soft, pliant, flesh on flesh and tongue on tongue, and -

"You taste like peppermint," Kurt told him, pulling back.

"Well, yeah," Blaine said, cocking his head to the side. "That's what happens when you brush your teeth and then your fiance kisses you."

"Why did you brush your teeth?"

"Because you were going to kiss me." And the teasing grin was back, and though it took Kurt a second to process, when he did his voice rose and he said in fond anger, "You _planned_ this!"

Instead of responding, Blaine chose the far wiser path and kissed him again.

* * *

Blaine was _hot_.

Blaine was breathing and flushed and sweaty and naked and _hot_.

So it wasn't surprising that it had led them to that moment, where Kurt was lying over Blaine, crooking his fingers inside him, stretching him open, and watching Blaine struggle to both fist the sheets and pull him closer. "_Please_, Kurt," he begged, "Just… please, just _fuck_ me." His wild curls were spilling over the pillow but plastered in clumps to his forehead, his eyes closed, his breath coming in short gasps of air that didn't seem like enough; _hot_.

Kurt curled his fingers and Blaine writhed, his limbs twitching, blinking, words starting to come out but gargling off. "I will soon, baby," Kurt promised.

"_Now_," Blaine pleaded. "Now, or I'm gonna lost it."

Kurt didn't want to, but he also didn't want Blaine to come just because of his fingers, so he withdrew them, and he reached for the condoms and the lube he'd discarded after slicking them. Blaine watched him, his eyes just barely open, wriggling on the mattress, flat against the crumpled sheets, his cock red and hard and against his stomach, precome shining on it. He whimpered and palmed his cock, moving along his shaft, and though it made the fire that was coursing through Kurt's veins just that much stronger to see Blaine touch himself, Kurt reached out and stopped him in favor of his own hand. "Not yet," he said, completely wrecked by the sight by still firm - it was his usual state when Blaine was naked.

"Please, I want -" Blaine was cut off when his last word cracked and then squeaked, because Kurt had angled himself and slid into the opening of Blaine's ass he'd just stretched. Blaine's eyes rolled back in his head, and his pants came longer, greedier, his muscles flexing as he moved against Kurt, pulling him closer, his jaw going just a bit slack. It took more self-control than Kurt knew he had not to come just at that sight.

Kurt was planning on being able to have sex for the rest of his life, but he would never get over just how gorgeous Blaine was or how amazing it was to be buried in him. "_God_, Blaine," he moaned, and he had to tighten his grip on Blaine's hips to keep himself grounded, because his bliss was almost making him dizzy. And then Blaine was moving, shifting, changing around Kurt, and feeling his muscles flex and contract around him made Kurt cry out - so did Blaine's legs hooking themselves around his waist, and his heels digging into the base of his spine, encouraging him to go even deeper. But Kurt didn't; if he moved, he was gone.

He had to bite the inside of his cheek to keep his focus, but he managed it; and he slid out of Blaine just enough to set his knees firmly under himself and thrust in. The lack of friction from no longer being in contact with Blaine's dick was a loss that took its toll, but when Kurt's hips bucked forward, both of them moaned. Blaine's mouth was only a few inches away, but Kurt didn't dare kiss him - those stupid noises, the feel of his face, and he wouldn't last a second longer. "Kurt, _Kurt_, _damn_ it, Kurt," Blaine panted.

Blaine clenched around him, tighter, tighter than he should have been, and Kurt released a guttural noise without meaning to, unthinkingly pulling out and then slamming back in, his hips crashing against Blaine's, and he couldn't tell if Blaine's gasp was more of pleasure or pain. "Sorry, I didn't mean -"

"Don't be sorry," Blaine growled, and Kurt's dick strained inside him at the gravel-filled tone. "Do it again."

He'd never be able to last longer than Blaine if he kept saying things like that. But he figured he'd cross that bridge when he came to it, and instead focused on rocking into him repeatedly, rough, sharp, fast. Kurt dropped his head to Blaine's collarbone and started sucking, his skin clean but slick, and Blaine threw his head back as much as he could, his back arching and his own hips thrusting with Kurt's with their lack of rhythm. They'd lost all beat to it - it was just frantic, needy. Blaine's hands clawed at Kurt's back in a relentless effort to draw him impossibly nearer, marking him. Kurt bit down suddenly on Blaine's tender skin, and the desperate noises he loved so much were around them out of Blaine's mouth, the sounds load and moaning, and Kurt fucked him faster.

Blaine's hand found the back of his head and brought it down sharply for a demanding, sloppy, off-center kiss, pushing his tongue into Kurt's mouth almost angrily. He groaned, his free hand dropping and falling limp on the sheets before grabbing it in a fist, "That, _yes_, do _that_, Kurt!"

"Are you going to come?" Kurt asked, hoping to any deity that could hear that the answer was yes; from the strand of profanities and variations of his name that followed, it sounded like his prayers had been answered.

Blaine was trying to palm his dick again, but once more Kurt did it for him. The precome worked as a lubricant, pumping his hand up and down the shaft, working along it, rubbing his thumb on the head of Blaine's cock when he could. Kurt returned to sucking the area of skin he'd bitten, causing Blaine to scramble for him with an almost animalistic yank.

Breathing was difficult and uneven, but Kurt couldn't bring himself to care; he pounded into Blaine, over and over, his hand getting faster and faster along with his hips, and then Kurt stopped moving his hips because he slipped as far into Blaine as he possible could - Blaine arched his back higher than he had before, choking on his own breath - but Kurt kept his hand moving, faster, and then Blaine was screaming his name, hoarsely, and clenching so tightly around Kurt he wasn't sure if the lights dancing in his field of vision were real, and coming with an unadulterated intensity that fed to the friction. And that friction finally drove Kurt past his ability to remain in control, and he came, too, the same bliss as before rushing through his veins and quenching the fire that had had him yearning for Blaine's touch, and he was dizzy, very dizzy, but equally as happy. His eyelids drooped and he fell onto his elbows, still gasping loudly for breath, like Blaine, their mouths now right against each other, but not kissing.

It took a while before they could breathe. When they could, their pulses were still racing, and Kurt swallowed unevenly before asking with a shaky but amused voice, "Where are the pillows?"

Blaine opened his eyes, and at first he only looked at Kurt, smiling serenely, but then he remembered Kurt's question and raised his head to look around quizzically. "We must have pushed them off," he answered.

"It's hard to cuddle without pillows," Kurt complained.

Blaine raised an eyebrow with slight incredulity. "I think the first step of cuddling is not having your dick still inside me, not _pillows_."

"Mm, I disagree," Kurt murmured, but then Blaine was chuckling and shaking his head at him, and there was pressure at the base of his cock and the warmth of Blaine was gone. He made a distasteful noise at the lack of it, but Blaine rolled the condom off anyway and tossed it into his trashcan, grabbing the box of tissues beside the lube and starting to wipe off his stomach and Kurt's hand.

"The second rule is probably not being sticky," Blaine told him, and his voice was shaking for an entirely different reason.

"Blaine Devon Anderson, you are laughing at me," Kurt accused.

"Yep," Blaine said cheekily, turning his stupid little grin on Kurt and continuing to laugh just enough to shake the two of them.

Kurt smacked the top of his head. "Asshole."

"But you just got out of that," Blaine said, feigning innocence, and then he shouted with uncontrollable giggles when Kurt attacked him with tickles.

* * *

Waking up the next morning was different for all of them. Rachel felt slightly sick to her stomach, but she assumed it was guilt, because she was laying on top of Cooper under the covers of one of the beds in the hotel room; she also thought it could be that she needed to take more pain medication for her arm, but she couldn't guess why it would affect her lower stomach. But then, his arms were around her waist tightly, and her hands were in his hair, so she let herself go back to sleep - and did so with a smile.

Cooper woke up just as Rachel was falling asleep again, and brought his hand up to play with her hair without thinking about it, his other thumb rubbing over the small of her back without any forethought. When he caught himself, he stopped, reminded himself that feelings weren't involved, and then passed out once more, because Rachel had started half-singing in her sleep, and even that was enough of a lullaby.

Brittany woke up in tangled limbs with Santana. She kissed her forehead lightly and then saw the clock on her bedside table, sighed, and untangled herself so she could get dressed and make them brunch.

Santana woke up to Brittany changing into her clothes for the day and got a free show of her stripping before she let her know she was awake.

Tina woke up early, and made everyone pancakes and fruit salad for breakfast - and then left it on the table for everyone and went to the other apartment to get revenge on Sam for taking her to a movie about cars, guns and explosions that he must have known she wouldn't like.

Sam woke up to Tina painting his toenails. He didn't even care.

Artie woke up to pancakes and an inconvenient morning erection.

Kurt and Blaine waking up isn't actually what's important about the fact that they woke up. What's important is that, for the first time in far too long, Blaine had slept in his arms because he wanted to. Not because he was tired, or drained, but because he wanted to. The marks on Kurt's back were from him, the hickey on his collarbone were from Kurt - and the skin and heartbeats and hands and smiles that he woke up to just re-confirmed his suspicion that it would all be alright.

"Good morning," Kurt told him, bringing him just a bit closer with the arm he had around his torso.

"Morning," Blaine said, grinning. "I have classes again today."

"And I have work."

"We need more milk."

"We need more lube."

"We need to go on a date."

"Mm." Kurt nodded, touching his forehead to Blaine's lovingly. "So when I get off work, I'll pick up the milk and lube, come home, and we can go out?"

"Waste of gas," Blaine told him. "I'll pick you up from work, we'll go on a date, and on the way home we'll get milk and lube."

"I might want to just throw together a grocery list if we're going shopping," Kurt remarked. "Where are we going on a date?"

"I don't know. A movie? Dinner? See something on Broadway?"

"Or," Kurt suggested, his voice low, "I could show you why cuddling doesn't necessitate my dick not being in your ass."

"But you could show me that now," Blaine pointed out, wiggling his eyebrows.

"Artie's in the next room," Kurt reminded him sadly, and then kissed him - it was a morning kiss, a slow one, hot and lazy and full of Good Mornings and I Love Yous. "But it's tempting."

"You're talking about sex and calling _me_ tempting," Blaine grumbled, and Kurt bit his lip to keep from laughing at him.

* * *

_**Hi! So, a bit of an author's note: I've had requests to turn this into a trilogy and expand on this ending, but the demand's not just high enough. If it rises, it just might, but it won't happen otherwise; however, there are some loose ends to tie up, so if you're interested, I could write some drabbles in the same 'verse about how everything really ends? The reason it's not cleared up here is because I wanted it open-ended, like real life; the story's never really done, no matter when I stop writing. And if you write me to write more, I will! Thanks for the love and support, I read every review with a smile!**_


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